CNC Plasma cutters, DIY, building info and guide

The link is suspicious but it has info related to this, so i left it there.
Those would probably die in the first half hour of doing production work, not just from that link but all of that type. Seen plenty of all kinds, taking a break after 15 to 30 minutes of non stop work.
On the other side, the Hypertherm, Thermal Dynamics, Esab, Kjellberg, and some older German made can work all day without a hitch.

machinedude wrote: that's my point spot on. once you get to the thicker material that's another level of difficulty the cheap machines will falter on. the thicker the material the higher the amps needed and far less duty cycle once you enter into that level of cutting. so if you want to do any kind of production runs all those machines won't handle that kind of load.

To be fair I would not expect a thousand dollar machine to do anything close to that level of production. I am sure most guys would be happy just to cut a wheel spacer.

I am sure you could get cut quality that most guys would accept from those machines. If you were only going to use it a couple times a year it does make sense. A Hypertherm or Thermal Dynamics or even Lincon machine would be superior but at a much steeper cost.

One thing that is great about those machine is that it does make getting into plasma cutting affordable for most people. If they have a positive experience for minimal outlay they may just spend the $11,000 to upgrade to a 125 PowerMax unit.

This thread is a heaven sent- thank you. I don't know why it's been so hard to find some comprehensive information like this.

I'm planning my build out now and after having read through this thread(heh,) I'm wondering what the benefit of having a machine torch is and what differentiates them from a hand torch other than the fact they mount easier(?)

I'm heavily considering this plasma cutter. It seems like a pretty good deal to me but as far as I can tell, they do not make a machine torch- which seems kind of non-nonsensical for a 'CNC' plasma cutter

No difference there, but usually the hand torches are far cheaper and lower quality. Trafimet makes the same torches for machine and hand cutting, they have no difference in quality of cut.
That plasma should work, but i have no idea about the quality of anything in it.

So as someone that has mill/turn capabilities- Is it a ridiculous notion to take the guts out of the OE torch and make something sturdier and more machine-torch like in shape?

I looked at the Everlast with the machine torch option that rodw mentioned but I have a really hard time justifying $400-$500 for something that doesn't really offer a practical difference, as much as it would bug me not to have it.

The_wolf_of_walmart wrote: So as someone that has mill/turn capabilities- Is it a ridiculous notion to take the guts out of the OE torch and make something sturdier and more machine-torch like in shape?

I looked at the Everlast with the machine torch option that rodw mentioned but I have a really hard time justifying $400-$500 for something that doesn't really offer a practical difference, as much as it would bug me not to have it.

To be fair, the hand torch is a low duty cycle torch and machine torches have a much higher duty cycle. The one I used on the Everlast was an 80 amp one vs 50 amp hand torch. But with the Everlast, it still does not allow ohmic sensing as it does not have a shield.

Having worked my way through a three plasma cutters since I started building a CNC machine, the additional spend on a quality brand is really money well spent. I think Everlast is probably the entry level. I'm told the Tecmo PM70 works with the Everlast and allows use of Hypertherm consumables (so that gives you a shield)