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

Really like the idea you have of using the router and extending it out for the plasma thus keeping the plasma table and router table totally seperate. Nice
Hood

Very cool & clever!

The Hypertherm is not a high-frequency start is it?  Have you encountered any noise issues or did you do any special grounding?  My present HF plasma (and HF start TIG) create enough EMI to cause my unshielded Mach3 setup to hang across the room.