Cutting 1" wide tungsten carbide plate strips with a Hypertherm 1000

Feb 02, 2005 2 Replies
B

Does anyone know the current (amps) rule of thumb for TC ?



3/8" plate seems to cut only very slowly and with lots of pure TC dross(dross length=material thickness) at 40amps, much faster, say
10-12" minute at 60 amps with dross length=1/4 material thickness max. This stuff is wierd to cut. It melts producing pure TC drossless dross. Hell to grind. Its not supposed to be a great heat conductor like copper, so why is it so resistant to plasma cutting? Also, I havent cut copper yet, so what can I expect with 110 copper plate, will it cut differently? Hopefully easier. Thanks.
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E

Tungsten and copper are both really good conductors, which reduces the ability to be cut with a plasma cutter. Copper usually cut's your plasma cutter's capacity in half. I can imagine tungsten being less than that.

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N

The stuff you're calling tungsten carbide is actually grains of tungsten carbide held together by a binder, usually cobalt. I imagine what is happening is that you're melting the binder, but not the TC itself, which has a very high melting point. As a result, the material you're trying to blow out of the kerf is a viscous slurry that resolidifies as icicles on the back of the plate before the air jet can blow it away. That's all wild speculation, but informed by a fair amount of experience with refractory metals.

Ned Simmons

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