Anything welding

Cookie Sheet...not just for oil drips anymore.

 

Lowes wanted $14 for an 18 x 18" piece of sheetmetal.

Fuck that!

 

That's legit!

Every welder has left over steel for stuff like this

 

Not if he is 800 miles from home.

 

counter-point. prevalence in the resale market could also indicate that it's least-liked, or performs worse than other options as well...

 

Thought that was a given considering how many were available but glad you stated it

They come up for sale here as well, as cheap as $1,100

 

The $1,800 models are basically mint, box opened but unused

Just did a 5 second search and here's what pops up already

 

Oh yeah, Im well aware

No surprise there. Your county probably has more people than my entire state..

 

just could not say No??

Sucks to not have access to your own Shop I get spoiled.

 

Well this should be a fun project lol

 

This was therapy! It was nice to blow out the cob webs!

 

Big motor/turbo swap?

 

A new place to hide from the wife??

 

I think it was kinda mutual.

I wanted gone and she wanted me gone for an afternoon.

She likes her old movies. I don't watch much TV at all, so we both win.

 

I wish. I'm too poor for that lol just redoing my intercooler piping then remaking the tubs once that's done.

 

@Kwikvette so... with the aluminum on your table... Curious if you can shed some light on this:

My high school robot kids are trying to make pretty cool stuff fast and a big limiter is big aluminum plates... We used send out to sendcutsend which is great if we have 7-15 days to wait, but that's a big chunk of our 10-12 week build window. We've basically adopted the strategy of avoiding designs that use big plate. But... cutting on a plasma table would be cost effective and hugely time saving, as long as we don't have to do gobs of cleanup.

-have you tried cutting 1/4"? If not, do you think it would work with just air?
-6061?
-how wide is the heat-effected zone?
-what's the kerf like? 10% from square per side? More?

Thank you so much!

 

Funny you ask, especially since I spent some time on the phone with my friend yesterday when he coincidentally sent me pics of him cutting aluminum...after I had just cut some myself.

He uses a Hypertherm 65 Sync with Finecut consumables on an STV Pro table, 220v Campbell Hausfield compressor, and Harbor Freight refrigerated air dryer, and in-line filters.

I use a

$699 PrimeWeld CUT60 60Amp Non-Touch Pilot Arc PT60 Torch Plasma Cutter 110V/220V Dual Voltage 3 Year Warranty

PrimeWeld CUT60 with UPM-105 torch and 'fine' consumables (1.0mm kerf) on a Langmuir table, 110v DeWalt compressor, and in-line dryer and filters.

Huge difference in setups but it's important to know this because -

In talking, we both experienced top dross on our initial pierce. Mind you he uses book settings as Hypertherm figured it all out for owners, whereas I took a guess and used a 0.8 second pierce delay versus his 0.1 second pierce delay.

Ignore the fact that I bent it but, that dross there is the top side of where the pierce was done. I didn't bother to clean it and I'm glad I didn't to showcase what I'm saying -



We also both experienced a faint 'lip' or edge on the bottom side of our cuts. Nothing really noticeable unless you specifically felt for it or ran your finger nail down to the edge.

As for the face itself, both were of a similar "rough" looking texture but felt smoother to the touch than it looks like -





Seems that aluminum is just really temperamental when it comes to 'corners' or any sort of detail as that's where I got the most dross, around the letters when I cut this thing out. He explained that he experienced the same.

We were both running around 45 amps on 1/8", yet I ran 130ipm and he was at about 92ipm if I recall...or close.

Just another metal to fine tune really but I don't believe it would need much dialing in like steel does because if you cut on air, you'll get similar results to what I've posted above on dirty scrap aluminum; he told me his aluminum was also from a pile of scrap and completely filthy like mine.

With that said, I expect better results on clean aluminum; there's a guy that only cuts aluminum as he TIG welds and does a lot of marine stuff using marine-grade aluminum all on air all on the same table I'm using (and a cheap Chinese plasma cutter).

As for 1/4", yeah my machine will easily do it and I'd be down to try but I never bothered mainly because there's never been a market for it (for my people that is) and I'd hate to think about how much it'd cost.

I'm not up to speed on aluminum types with the exception of temper and all in relation to bending.

Oh and to answer your question about losing material upon cutting, that really comes down to how you have your kerf values setup on Fusion (or whatever CAM you'd use) as you're going to lose some on the inside and be dead-on with outside measurements or vice versa. Mine is kind of split between both.

 

Just be aware that the water table can trap hydrogen gas under the aluminum plate. Stirring the water really good or no water was what i have seen recomended

 

Yep, downdraft table is ideal and a few have done that on their Langmuir

Or lowering the water level (to protect the water table) otherwise you'll slice through it if no water at all

 

The hydrogen sounds like no joke.

Thanks so much for the awesome info. We’d mostly be cutting 1/8-1/4” 6061 and then finishing some details on a mill (bores for press fits, some drill/tap, etc) but sounds like it could be a good solution. A little cleanup isn’t the end of the world.