In this episode, Jim Colt, an industry veteran from Hypertherm, talks about the different cut processes you might use on your CNC plasma cutting machine. Visit www.maverickcnc.com/ for more information on all of our plasma cutting tables.
There is no one process that is going to be perfect for every application. You have to determine what is most important to as the user. Is it cut quality, speed, cutting different materials? That is going to determine what the best process is going to be.
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Video description :
Jim Colt here from Hypertherm. I wanted to brooch on a subject that comes up just about everyday on online forums or somebody on the phone or an email to me, customers asking about which process is best for them. You know there’s a lot of different ways to cut metals - plasma, water jet, laser and oxy fuel and a few others, you can use saws and others.
Those are the main ones - plasma, water jet, laser and oxy fuel that are used on CNC cutting tables like the one behind me here. In reality, there is no one process that is going to be perfect for every application so if you can provide details about the type of application you want, what’s most important to you, is it perfect cut quality? Your not going to get that with any of them, nothings perfect. It is speed, you just need the biggest pile of parts off the table at the end of the day? Or do you have to cut some three inch thick mild steel today and some twenty-six gauge steel tomorrow? Or do you cut metal eighty percent of the time but every once in a while you need to throw a piece of wood or a piece of glass up on the table?
Because not all these processes cut all materials like that. So in a nutshell, let me talk about plasma verses water jet verses laser verses oxy fuel and I’ve been in a number of facilities that have every one of those processes on their shop floor and they use them for what they’re best at. So plasma, think about plasma, there’s actually a couple of different big variations in plasma cutting, one is an air plamsa like is used on a light industrial table like this one, this one has a Powermax 125 from Hypertherm on it air plasma cutting system. Air plasma’s the lowest cost to purchase and also one of the lowest cost to operate so the cost per foot of cut which includes the cost of the consumables, the cost of air, the cost of electricity, all of those things.
Really reasonable with an air plasma cutting system. Then the second kind of type of plasma cutting is high definition plasma cutting, your going to see that on bigger machines, machines that have better bearing ways on them, different types of drive motor, higher acceleration rates and things like that and higher cost. High definition plasma kind of takes a step above air plasma. The cutting costs are very similar but the edges are cleaner. They use oxygen for cutting steel as opposed to air for cutting steel. You can’t do that with an air plasma, oxygen gives a better metallurgic finish on the edge of the plate, faster cut speeds and high definition plasmas are really the fastest way to cut most materials used in production between thin gauge material and say one and a half to two inch thick material.
So high definition plasma’s another good choice. Laser, everybody say “well I think I’m going to go buy a laser to cut the art work I’m doing”, may or may not be a good idea, you need perfect art work or really tight tolerances and you can afford the high price of a laser cutting system then maybe the laser is the right thing for you. Lasers have a really high capital equipment cost, when you buy them they cost a lot and they do a better job than most of these other processes on thin material, in fact, this is a stainless steel piece cut with a laser out of, I’m going to guess, probably twenty gauge stainless steel, very very nice quality. You can’t do that with a plasma, you could do it with a water jet, we’ll talk about that in a minute.