Ive got an opportunity to do some horse trading for an older plasma cutter. The odd thing about this one..it uses Nitrogen and I think CO2
It may be a ThermoDynamics or a Miller. Ive not seen the unit in a year or so.
Anyone have any information on how, why and waffor?
And should I bother?
Gunner
"Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire. Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us) off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give them self determination under "play nice" rules.
Think of it as having your older brother knock the shit out of you for torturing the cat." Gunner
I know I'd bother. They're a really nice tool to have, you can get along without one but you'll be amazed at how much you do with it after having it for a while.
It may be a ThermoDynamics or a Miller. Ive not seen the unit in a year or so.
Anyone have any information on how, why and waffor?
And should I bother?
Gunner
"Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire. Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us) off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give them self determination under "play nice" rules.
Think of it as having your older brother knock the shit out of you for torturing the cat." Gunner
Got one sitting out front you could have but I you're not enemy enough for me to let you take it.
Probably ThermoDynamics.
No. I just went through this. There's several reasons why the big one in you case is that you can't afford it. Even if the torch is still in good shape it'll be very expensive to get parts for. The cost of the gas is just another issue (no it won't work with air unless you change the torch). Changing the torch is a hit or miss proposition. I spent lots of money getting a new torch for mine and it never worked worth a flip once I did.
Many of the old BIG plasmas, such as Thermal Dynamcis Pac 10's or Pac
5's, can be retrofitted with a new torch from Thermal that allows you to use just compressed air. We did this to our Pac 10 at school and it made a world of difference. Makes the torch parts much cheaper too.
I was walking through my favorite Colorado scrap yard one day and thought I saw a plasma cutter torch. It was still attached to the plasma cutter, a Pak 5 from TD. They knew me pretty well there; we ended up at $50 for the whole thing.
Not only was this unit originally for nitrogen, the torch was also in pretty bad shape. About $400 later I had a new compressed air conversion and some spare consumables. The unit was 3 phase, but had schematics for converting it to single phase. The schematics called for a change of one of the PC boards, but it was just re-wiring, which I could do on the existing board. Fired it up and it worked. I was amazed.
It did the job for me, although the kerf was a bit wide. I could rough sever 1" stock (pretty rough); 3/4 was more reasonable, 1/2 worked fine. I ended up selling it when I moved. The Pak 5 worked well for me, but I really like my new Hypertherm.
I looked at it today. Its a PCM 100, which I believe is an L-Tec. He said it was made by thermo dynamics. The owner is a welding machine repair shop, and it was brought in, according to the service report, with the coolant pump not pumping. Which cant be too big a thing. Ive got some Procon pumps and motors and whatnot. He is going to toss in another one just like it that has been slightly cannibalized, for spare parts, both for the equivelent in trading Stuff for $100. He will supply new consumables too, one set anyways. It uses nitrogen as the sheilding gas, and I guess CO2 as the cutting gas, or visa versa. He says it will work with air and CO2, though consumbable life will be shorter. Ill try to find a nitrogen tank somewhere and as I likely wont be using it all that much, not in a production environment, Ill worry about doing a compressed air retrofit torch at a later date.
Anyone know anything about this machine? I believe that this is a 100 amp machine, the torch is pretty good sized..big in fact. Supposedly HF machine, no contact needed to cut up to about 1", though Im not sure I can feed it that much juice with a 10hp rotary converter, and besides..Im not going to be cutting much that big. Shrug. Most likely
3/8 or once in a while, 1/2" rough cuts. Farm stuff.
Gunner
"Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire. Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us) off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give them self determination under "play nice" rules.
Think of it as having your older brother knock the shit out of you for torturing the cat." Gunner
Addendum. From a bit of web search..this appears to be a rebadged TD Pak-22 (water cooled)
It may be dual or single gas. I dont know. There was one (1) regulartor in the storage bin on top, which is supposed to be blown out.
Gunner
"Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire. Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us) off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give them self determination under "play nice" rules.
Think of it as having your older brother knock the shit out of you for torturing the cat." Gunner
Seems you can't go too wrong, hundred bucks ain't all that much for a plasma cutter. HF start has a distinct advantage over contact start in that it'll go through heavy rust and paint, where the contact start can't. They say the downside is that the HF plays hell with CNC if you wish to go that route.
100 amps is a lot, that should do inch steel nicely. I think as long as you're keeping it below 40-50 amps you should have no trouble with the RPC. Might be worth seeing if the control runs off single phase and, if so, avoiding feeding it with the manufactured leg, but other than that I'll bet it'll work slick.
Hang onto the next 10HP motor you come across for future expansion of your phase converter. I bet you find plenty of uses cutting stuff larger than 1/2".
Got one just like it setting in front of my shop ruining. I put close to $1000 in it trying to rig it with a air torch only to find the HF to strong and would blow the tips in the torch instantly.
If it's got the original torch then it uses a tungsten electrode which won't like air for a cutting gas. If you can get by with air for anything I'd say that it would replace the CO2 fairly well since that's just a shielding gas being blown around the plasma.
I've got the manual for it around here somewhere.
The water pump getting weak is the main failure mode of these machines as far as I can tell. Once that happens then you start melting holes in the leads to the torch.
At the very least for $100 you can probably scrap it and make it back. There's got to be 100-200 lbs of copper in that machine. It will not be portable on your back 40 that's for sure. It weighs about the same as that cybertig I believe.
I'm not sure how well it'll do on the rotary converter. One thing about these is that the amp control on the front is just a suggestion to the machine. It will and can put out 75-100 amps with the control turned all the way down. It just puts out however much is needed to do the cut. BTW that 100 amps is at 100% duty cycle. The machine is actually capable of 150 amps at a lower duty cycle. It will zip through 1" pretty darn fast if you can feed the power to it.
I've never seen one that was single gas. At least not originally. It would need a different torch. All I can say torch wise is to get one with a proven record with that power supply. The only one that I know of which has that record is a odd ball which will be hard to get consumables for.
The controls run off the main transformer which has 3 phase power in. They draw all running power off that transformer so there's no real difference in the legs. BTW the controls are 110V.
OK, if it's a three-phase control it would likely work with a phase convertor.. the jumbo Lincoln transformer welder I tried it with about a year ago has a three-phase control and it worked well up to the point where the convertor was overwhelmed by the demand, then the arc started limping.
We have it's big brother at school, a PCM-150. The torch tends to devour consumables. You would be well advised to install a new Thermal-Dynamics 100 amp torch.
"Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire. Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us) off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give them self determination under "play nice" rules.
Think of it as having your older brother knock the shit out of you for torturing the cat." Gunner
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