Cutting Stainless Steal

Kevin,

You really need to get a working spell checker on your Email program.

An Oxyacetylene torch will cut through sheet stainless, maybe melt through may be more accurate. It would not be choice #1 depending on what you are doing.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Keep the whole world singing. . . . DanG

Not with any accuracy or elegance. It will melt if you heat it hot enough but that produces an ugly, slaggy, irregular result that will also cause significant chromium and carbide precipitation around the edge. It will also probably cause massive warping due the the thermal stresses/gradients and the quantity of heat you'll need.

Unlike steel, stainless won't "burn" by reacting with the oxygen -- it will simply melt.

Cutting with an oxy-torch isn't about melting the metal with the flame, it's about geting the steel hot enough that it will actually react with the oxygen and burn -- thus completely ablating the material rather than just causing it to melt.

The best option for cutting stainless is a plasma cutter.

While it does melt the stainless, it does so with a much narrower jet of fast moving plasma that requires far less heat to be used and produces much faster removal of material -- the plasma stream blasts away the melted metal almost instantly.

I bought a second-hand plasma cutter about a year ago and although it was an old-fashioned thing that weighed a ton, it was one of the best investments I ever made. Cheaper to run than an oxy cutting torch, far more versitle (it will cut any metal) and (to my mind) a whole lot safer.

-- you can contact me via

That is exactly what I was asking! I knew I could melt it, but I was not sure if it would burn like mild steel. I will have to put a plasma cutter on my wish list.

Thank You.

Just rent one for a weekend when you need it, until you can afford to buy one.

A small plasma is only about $50 for a weekend.

Ernie Leimkuhler spluttered in news:281220032309438719% snipped-for-privacy@stagesmith.com:

Mmm. Never thoughta that!

I rented Plasma cutters of all sizes for 7 years before finally buying one. It gave me the opportunuity to try out the different makes and sizes.

When I went to buy my Thermal Dynamics Pak38XL, I knew that it was the most appropriate machine for what I do.

The answer is that you can kind of cut stainless with oxy/acet. The trick that more or less works is to lay a plain steel wire or rod on top of the stainless. The torch will burn the plain steel and the jet of burning steel will melt the stainless. Not the best solution, but better than trying to do it without the plain steel rod.

Dan