New Plasma build in OZ

Just waiting for there quote to come in as well as the one from TEA

Hi James, I'm a total greenhorn at building a cnc plasma table, so take this with a grain of salt.
I purchased the guide rails, carriages, rack & pinions, ball screw etc as one package from Automation Overstock direct from USA. Kent Williams was the contact. Terrific service, even with shipping supply problems at their end.
My table is puny compared to yours and Stefan's....6x4 cutting ability in the old money. But like both of you, I too subscribe to heavier is better. To that end I went with humungous 30 rails figuring they can stiffness to the Y travel. All up the package cost a tad under $3000, including air freight. 8 days to get into Adelaide.
Bodgied up a temporary bridge this arvo to see if my Y rail set up was parallel ?
I am a happy little vegemite, they are ! Currently requires 4kg pull to move the gantry, with further tweaking of the carriage mounts, I hope to get this below 2kg.
Cheers Christopha

Thanks for that
Where are you located?

I checked out Automation Overstock, prices were in par with local supplies and im guessing the shipping would be high. Also theye dont have 4m rails in stock.

This is also my first build but my 4th table.
Im currently using as samson 510 and the previous table were chinese ones.

What im trying to do is build out all the things that anoyed me me on the last 3 tables and build in all the things I wish I had.
To that end im designing in Solidworks first. This lets me test things like the mechacnicals, stresses ect. I will also know things like the gantry weight before I build it.

As for now the table base is more or less locked in. Im working on the gantry design now.

Would you mind sharing what annoyed you with your other tables?

How does the Samson 510 go? I have seen them for sale locally and was curious how it would be to use daily in a heavy fabrication workshop. It look rather flimsy and for the price I could build a much heavier duty machine.

To give you a comparison on the 3 tables

1st one was a chinese 1325 (claimed) with water table
In reality it was hard pushed to fit a 1200x2400 sheet
Spent lots of time lining up sheet to make things fit.
Control system was an early starfire with poor thc.
Chinese 120a plasma source in reality compares to a 60a hypertherm in terms of cut thickness.

This was my first table I just thought this was how plasma was so got by.

I replaced that with another chinese table and this time went for a hypertherm 85. This had a 2kw router on it as well. So this had 2 controllers one for plasma and one for routing.
Same issues with the control systems lots of work dialing it in even with the hyperthem charts. Overall much better cut quality but thats due to the hypertherm power source and torch.

here is link to the table  plasma/router

What I know now is both had way to heavy gantries, suffered poor acceleration and cut quality suffered.
The second table was servo driven so much less of an issue but still not what you want

For both of these
They had lips on the side which made loading sheets harder
This was componded by the fact the top of the slats was below the lip making it even harder to align sheets.
I need to lift some sheets using plate clamps rather than the magnets. Getting the clamps off was a near impossible task
The water tables allways spill water over the side when cutting near the edge
Slats were straight aloowing movement in smaller light sheet
Torch was in the way when loading sheets (no parking area)
Control unit was not able to get into a good position for seeing 0,0 and using the unit (cables too short)
Littile adjustment on the level, allthough a one off still a pita. Had to mod both as the jack screws could not lock and level changed over time.
Lots of bit broke off like poorly mounted limit switches

The samson was not my choice and was more or less Inherented and is a whole other story.
Its servo driven and light so thats a plus. Im using a hypertherm 125 and machine torch.
It works well on 1mm tough 25mm, havent personall cut more on it
Negatives are the raised sides in that you need to load from one end only
It has down draft which has its own challanges. All the dust though the 4 fans proves problematic and fans fail as a result.
Ducting also make it hard to get around the table.
Overhead cables fail due to streess of being hung, plugs come lose and fail for the same reason
I really dont like the control pannel mounted on the post. It forces you to walk around a lot to position the 0,0 while tripping on the ducting.
The slats are custom made, while we cut them on the table, still not ideal. If I was keeping it this would be ripped out
With the downdraft its not as flimsy on the base but it still moves around, not ideal
Also dont like all the exposed pulleys and the dust that gets into them. 
Im concerned by the longterm wear of the carrages using skateboard type bearings on RHS. These need maintence to keep the play out
Also no lube system for the bearings.

Thts most of it off the top of my head





 

To go another direction on what I want included

Bed to be flat, no obstruction to loading on 3 sides
Easy to align sheets

Gutter beween the bed and cutting area to prevent water spillage.(I cant count how many times Ive also overfilled the water)

Rails inder the bed to keep them protected and as dust free as possible

Curved slats to help with light sheets and minimise wear on straight cuts

Filtration on the water, used a pool filter and glass beads to do this before, going the same again.

Remote lubrication system. Looking at 3 Automatic Lubrication Pumps, one for each axis.

Ability to add a scribe, probally wont add it initally though. Just going to be ready but both scribe and torch have to operate over the full cutting area.
Wider table to allow for 1800mm wide sheets. Also planning for a camera

Ability to move the table (using the fork or the tractor). This is for ocasional cleanup under the table and or access to other maintence work in the shop. IE sooner or latter the LED high bays will need to be accessed above the table. These are 6m up, so it would ne nice to be able to move the table for the sissor lift to get in.

Grantry as light as possible
Working though this in solidworks now. Testing various designs with varying alloy RHS beams. Mainly looking at the stiffness and fatigue and weight to start with.

Thats the major things

Prices in from industrial dynamics

4000mm rails $492.10 each
Carrages $58.10 each
Seal/Scraper kit $28.07 each
Shipping to Sunshine coast $170

Prics ex gst

Thats probably a fair price. I was quoted USD $45 a metre for genuine Hiwin HGR25 ex China. 4.0 m lengths would have to come by sea as they are too long for air freight. Thats not difficult through my freight forwarder but there is a MOQ of 10 lengths. At a guess there would be about AUD $150-$180 per length shipping so you'd need to add a fair bit more to the order to get the shipping down...