Plasma CNC help

?yguid=82702294?yguid=82702294 You cuts will be fine with compressed air when under CNC control. Your machine will work (start cartridge with no hi-freq) but low duty-cycle and 30 amp output will really limit your capability.

Scott

"Kryptoknight" wrote: (clip) can one use a gas (argon, co2, etc) instead of air to get a cleaner cut? ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Plasma is gas that has been raised to such a high temperature that the atoms break apart into subatomic particles. I don't think it would make any difference what the original material was--it all becomes a stream of electrons, protons and neutrons.

I think I'll step in to this now.

The air is used extensively to Cool the working end of the plasma torch. They require a certain amount of air without burning themselves. A lot of the swarf on the bottom of the cut is foam metal based from the airflow and slow cutting which provides more metal.

If you use another gas, the cooling effect is different. I have heard that Nitrogen is used - off site. Air on site. If you add large atoms you will cause gouging in the cut and maybe worse.

Martin

Martin Eastburn @ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net NRA LOH & Endowment Member NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder

Leo Lichtman wrote:

I tried using nitrogen instead of air and the results with steel were markedly worse than with compressed air. Later on, I swapped email with a factory rep on the subject and he said that was to be expected with steel. He said nitrogen works OK on stainless though (I never tried it).

There are several reasons I can think of that different gasses might work differently: ionization energy, thermal conductivity, molecular weight, reactivity, moon phase (grin). Physics class was a long long time ago, I am not even going to guess which one it might be.

In any event the manual that came with my cutter (Thermal Dynamics) was very explicit - air or nitrogen only.

Bob