I recently learned that plasma cutting steel produces a nitride hardened surface on the cut edges. If you take a file to it the file will not cut. This is due to the extreme temperature of the plasma arc's effect on the nitrogen content of the air going through the nozzle tip.

@Welddotcom

2 ай бұрын

That is a very helpful bit of info thank you!

@Turndog82

2 ай бұрын

Fill will not lol!

@Fischer-CAP

2 ай бұрын

I made this experience when I pierced thicker material with the plasma to make drilling easier for me. As a result, I achieved the opposite.

@melgross

2 ай бұрын

It’s also due to the rapid cooling that occurs right after the plasma goes by. It can be at least partly mitigated by heating the edges to an orange color, keeping it there for 10-15 seconds and letting it cool.

@jhowse19801

2 ай бұрын

​@@melgross So basically a normalizing process unless I miss my guess. That makes sense. Thanks for the tip. I'll try that the next time I plasma cut

It's not really a matter of saving time, but a matter of saving money. Cut off disk are expensive even if bought in bulk compared to how much you can cut from plasma consumables. If properly cut with a plasma the dross cut easily be knocked off with a chipping hammer or scrap steel. Then a hit it with a flip disk real quick and your ready to weld. Made 2 cross members for a build, first was made with cutoff wheels, took 3 hours and bout 20 disk to cut the parts. Second i bought a primeweld cut60, it was same size and took 30 mins cutting and prepping parts before welding and one set of consumables that I'm still using. So figure up 20 dewalt cutoff wheels compared to one set of consumables. Ya that's a big savings and it this case, a savings on 2 and half hours of cut time.

@timblack33

2 ай бұрын

Agree 100%. An air needle scaler is the ticket I’ve found for getting all that dross off plasma cut parts

You should do some destructive testing on those dirty welds

Any of the Primadonna aerospace TIG welders will tell you to clean /grind that to the sweet spot or we won’t touch it

that yeswelder is about all a person would ever need.. I have to have a bit more current for carbon-arc gouging to suffice tho

@Welddotcom

2 ай бұрын

It is a pretty sweet machine, thanks for watching!

Love that kind of knowledge! Thank!

@Welddotcom

2 ай бұрын

You bet!

Thx for this info! Lake Havasu 🌞 Az

I think you'd have better results with 3/32" E7018 if you ran it at 95amps, where it's normally supposed to run.

I do this every single day with 1/16'' solid wire spray. Granted, it's on much thicker plate (3/4''+) and is usually a thin layer of slag that you could take off in a pass or less with a 36 grit sanding pad.

@MikeP350

2 ай бұрын

Don't knowingly weld over trash, clean your weld joints 👍🏻

if the speed and feed on the cnc plasma table is set properly the only "dross" that is left behind (if any) should knock right off with no effort... if it is sticking to the point it needs to be ground , speed and feed is wrong 'or nozzle, bad air, or something else' --------- I cut and hot glue that stuff together all the time no problem. 👍 ---- mind you if the job requires it, more prep work should done as needed.

I agree with what you're saying...however, there's very limited scenarios where you may leave small divots plasma scarfing and a little bit of dross isn't going to kill the weld structurally. Of course you never want slag. Yes I know that sounds bad but technically the policy is plasma is weldable. Now this is with 116 metal core.

Does that plasma use a drag tip or stand off. Thanks

Mofo got it's own compressor 😮 That's badass I want it 😮😮😮

@Welddotcom

2 ай бұрын

You can also still hook up an air compressor to it as well and cut thicker metal with 220. But for the home shop it saves some space.

That's an easy yes. You can weld over all sorts of things; I've seen guys weld over cuts, rust, coolant, paint, slag, and cracks. Is it a good idea? Probably not. Is it to code? I don't think so. Does that stop people? Not very often

@Welddotcom

2 ай бұрын

It will weld, just not the best quality for sure and might as well take the time to clean it up to avoid having to fix it down the road.

I cut thinner steal and have no problem with dross and contamination, I make expansion chambers out of 22-24 gage and fuse the cones with oxy/acedl with no rod. Tig on these is way too slow. I use a jewelry torch and have very nice looking welds. I think you were using the wrong plasma torch. With 110-120v I wouldn’t even attempt to cut 1/8 in materials. On sheet metal it zips right thru with no distortion or heat build up.

Hopefully it cuts better than that on 240V.

There is a serious difference in welding non cleaned manual plasma cut edges vs cleaned, and even more so of a difference if you include cnc plasma cut edges.

@Welddotcom

2 ай бұрын

If you dial in your plasma cutter you can get super clean cuts but, taking the time to prep the cut zone makes a big difference.

I'm a total hobbyist noob. But I just assumed cleaning before ANY weld is SOP. Am I missing something?

@Welddotcom

2 ай бұрын

Always best to have clean metal to weld on but wanted to see no cleaning vs clean metal.

I was expecting instant porosity on tig

WTF who would ever weld over dross?

@Welddotcom

2 ай бұрын

Curious welders trying to see what would happen.

@melgross

2 ай бұрын

Yeah, at least remove that. I’ve welded over plasma cut, but I’ve always removed the dross and cleaned the edges.

Sure you can, it'll be someone else's problem.