Hi All,
I am extremely pleased with the parts I made with my new Plasma Cutter!! I built a cnc router/engraver that I have used for years and yes I can even machine 1” aluminum and even steel with beautiful results as you can see in the video!! I have had a Hypertherm 1000 that I have had a lot of fun using- a very well built machine. It is a rather small machine really but will cut ½” steel plate with a very slow feed rate. I have built a very simple way to convert my cnc router to a cnc plasma complete with water bath in about 20 min. and back to cnc router in less than 5 min. not including clean-up of the plasma tank. That takes about 30 min. the way I do it. I built the hole thing in a weekend. There are two main components to construct. The first is an extension arm that mounts in place of my Portacable 3 ¼ hp router. The second is a water bath built from expanded pvc foam board. I tried the system out cutting a couple of large “C” plates from some 3/8 mild steel plate. Wow they turned out beautiful!! I had the feed rate turned down pretty low but even at that it only took about 10 min. to cut each, I made two. The cost to build the system minus the plasma machine was around $300. One thing is for sure I don’t thank it could be any easier to set up than this. Hope you like the pics and video.
Werner
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=2026423991