How to cut thick material from edge

rodw wrote: Well I do know some guys pre-pierce with magnetic drill where they need an inside cut

I have herd of that before. I would like to see how a Oxy Fuel setup would work. One Day!

It works pretty well really. We had one part from 32mm and it did not matter much if it was flame cut or done with Hidef plasma. A bit more cleanup on oxy. It was too thick for laser cutting. The guys in Brissy her that do the flame cutting have a table if you can call it that which is 90 metres long! Pretty impressive. Wanna cut a warship out? They showed me some parts they cut that were about 6" thick.

rodw wrote: It works pretty well really. We had one part from 32mm and it did not matter much if it was flame cut or done with Hidef plasma. A bit more cleanup on oxy. It was too thick for laser cutting. The guys in Brissy her that do the flame cutting have a table if you can call it that which is 90 metres long! Pretty impressive. Wanna cut a warship out? They showed me some parts they cut that were about 6" thick.

A war ship you say, sounds like a challenge!

How is the taper on oxy cut parts? When I started my Boikermaker/Welding apprenticeship back in 2005, the first thing we learnt was how to properly use a hand oxy. Makes life easier when working with steel when you can heat, bend and cut it at will.

There was none apparent. I guess they had a 5 axis head

Just curious, why would the 5 axis head make a difference?

A good machine Oxy torch will cut 160mm at quite nice finish requiring little after work. As with everything there are some "gotchas" working with it, most of it i do not know, unfortunately.
About 15 or so months ago i was working as a General Manager at a local factory dealing in metalwork for export to Austria, there was an employee there who knew everything about Oxy cutting, would not teach anyone even if his life depended on it! Miserable P. of $itt!
The machine i built for them has two separate fully functional Z axis, both with floating heads, one was used for plasma and the other for Oxy, i did quite successfully cut some 60mm material on it with more than respectful finish, just a quick angle grinder was needed to be perfect.
Preheat is very important, otherwise it ends up in strange shapes !

How fast do Oxy machines move Tom? I would imagine very slowly, also how do they go with piercing?

The trick with flame cutting is to not overrun the preheated area. Piercing isn't quite as simple as with plasma...gotta build up good preheat all around the pierce area to get through.

dvn4life1972 wrote: The trick with flame cutting is to not overrun the preheated area. Piercing isn't quite as simple as with plasma...gotta build up good preheat all around the pierce area to get through.

Yeah I thought as much. I would imagine that a CNC oxy would be similar to a hand oxy with piercing. How do you go with the nozzles clogging up?

I've never done it on a machine, always by hand. I would angle the torch head and wash the molten material away for piercing thick material.