Hello everyone, this is my first post and it's rather long but I felt compelled to add my comments about a product that deserves some attention. This post is my review on the Neuron THC system.

I have been using my plasma system for about 3 years now cutting mostly 3/8" mild steel plate using a Hypertherm Powermax 45. Several months ago I decided to upgrade the THC and after many phone calls and emails I decided to go with Neuron. Since installation I have cut over 1000 parts in 3/8" mild steel using the Neuron. Cutting 3/8" steel will give you a good idea of edge squareness and height control. So far I am totally satisfied with this system and have had 0 failures related to THC.
This is the system I built and some ideas that some might find useful:



Here is a shot of the table with it's cover on. The cover is a sheet of blue 1" thick insulation that I picked up for cheap at a building supply store. It's easy to cut, very durable and light and is not affected by the water chemistry PH. It has knocked the evaporation of the table fluid down to near zero. The other thing you may notice is the stainless doughnut on the bottom of the torch. It's held on by a simple o-ring and is bore is .020" larger than the O.D of the torch head. This simple doughnut keeps the machine a lot cleaner by deflecting a lot of the pierce spatter back down into the fluid. To change consumables you just slide it off and on the o-ring.

My favorite part of the machine is my poor mans machine torch made from a Sage fly rod tube. The internals are the stock Hypertherm hand torch very CAREFULLY brought into alignment with the gas inlet. The end of the Sage was machined to secure the head of the Hypertherm. The most difficult part was actually machining the Derlin strain relief for the end of the torch. The Y-Axis uses THK rails, two trucks each side and the X-Axis uses two NSK rails. The machine is very accurate.


Here is another shot of the table with the cover removed after I installed all new slats. I used to use the Sodium Nitrite based recipe common on the web, but I did not like the stability of that mix so I ended up using KCI Chemical's Plasma green 1050. This is the best product I have found to date and it has no amines and shows much better PH stability.

The brains of the system:

Lenovo M90P Intel i5, 4GB ram
Windows 7 professional 64 bit SP1
Neuron THC System
Ethernet Smoothstepper
ESS Driver ESS-v10r2d1b
Gecko G540 (X,Y,A)
M542 Stepper Driver (Z)
.200 lead on Z axis
Mach 3 Version R3.043.067
TP-Link TL-SG105 Gigabit switch
Hypertherm Powermax 45
Majority of material cut 3/8" mild steel plate at 45A

One thing to note that is so important to consumable life is the air. I use a refrigerated dryer running at 34 degrees right after the compressor then right before the Hypertherm I have a large CDS desiccant cartridge using Silica beads and a Cobalt blue moisture indicator on the canister, then I go into the Motorgard filter. The beads are easily regenerated by baking the moisture out and are cheap so you can always have a fresh charge on hand . My air is now clean and dry period.

The Neuron THC

The main screen.....


The above shot of the main screen in Mach. The more I use it, the more I like it, clean with large toolpath window.

My favorite feature of this system is how well it samples voltage to control height. This feature is my lifesaver for cutting thick material and the Neuron does it so well. It is a must have in my book and here is why. There is a common misconception about THC and cut charts:

TIP VOLTAGE EQUALS CORRECT TORCH HEIGHT - WRONG!
CORRECT TORCH HEIGHT EQUALS TIP VOLTAGE - RIGHT!

Example, if I put a large lightly rusted plate on the machine that looks like a piece of swiss cheese and connect the ground in one corner and am using a tip with 3000 inches of use on a rainy day and open my book to see that Hypertherm says 122 volts for .375" material does that equal .060"? Hell no, that means nothing, even correcting for the voltage divider it still means nothing. But if the system does the IHS, starts and captures the voltage at the correct height in the correct way then uses that voltage to control the height we now have a working system and Neuron does this really well. This feature was know as "Smart Cut" with CANDCNC but was dropped that last time I spoke with them. Tom, if you are out there, I would highly recommend you bringing it back.
I get all of my material from Couer d' alene steel, and like most all mild steel it's not virgin material and at a cut height of .060 I have seen variations of up to 10 volts depending on plate and conditions which will throw cut charts right out the window. I still use them, but only for pierce and height parameters then I let Neuron set the voltage.

The Neuron also has the ability to capture them actual tip voltage within Mach as shown below:


Example of the ability to capture data using the Neuron THC. The above graph showing the start of the cut. I can scroll through the entire graph and capture hundreds of data points, all within Mach at the click of a mouse. Why is this important? How else can you optimize THC parameters? Maybe this is overkill, but to me this is a valuable feature.

The above photo showing end of cut data.
Neuron uses Sheetcam rules to control the THC on/off depending on conditions as shown below. Again the system does this very well.



Cut height vs tip voltage

Attachment 265330

The relationship between tip height and torch voltage. This is something I scoured the web for and could not find, so I painstakingly did it myself. The first step was to shim and level a 3/8" mild steel plate on the plasma table and capture the data via Neuron on a series of cuts with the tip height ranging from .040" to .080" in height and plot the data. The actual tip voltage is not important, it's the slope that matters. For 3/8" mild steel you can see that I am getting about .010" per volt in tip voltage.


What is interesting is that when repeating the experiment on material of 1/2 the thickness the value climbs to almost 2 volts per .010". Why go to this much trouble, I am a data driven person and to know how accurate this system is I needed to know the relationship between volts and height.

Some results:

Very accurate height control is not that important for free form work, but on the industrial side, it saves me money. I love to do machine parts via Autocad. I recently did some blower flanges that could be tapped on .120 wall nozzles and held in place without clamping.
It's all about the edge! Correct torch height will give you a square edge and a square edge give you dimensional accuracy. I measure my kerf width with a feeler gauge and check the value all the time. Bad THC can add easily change the kerf by .010 so it all kinda ties in. If I tell Sheetcam my kerf is .048, it's pretty damn close and after a while you can figure out how to do some pretty accurate cutting, but this is all dependent on holding that correct height.
Note: This is all directly related to material thickness. If I was only cutting 16GA material I honestly would be alot less concerned, because basically there is no edge and THC can get pretty loose, but cut over 1000 parts out of 3/8" plate and you start learning what accurate height control is all about.


The above photo is a shot of the typical cuts I get using the Neuron THC. Very square edges and very little dross that I can remove with my fingernail.

Cutting conditions:

Hypertherm Powermax 45 @ 45A
Cut Height .060
Feedrate 30IPM
Pierce Height .180"
Pierce Time 1.8 Seconds
Ultra dry/clean air

Consumable life:

With the above conditions and accurate height control I get over 6000" of cutting 3/8" which results in about .030 loss of the Hafnium electrode and it's still cutting well at that level. I recently pulled a nozzle (220671) and an electrode (220669) that I pushed to over 8500 inches and 472 pierces.
I also compensate the height at 75% of the Hafnium loss, so for example at a level of .020 loss I have moved the head down .015 in compensation. The Neuron keeps track of the cutting time and the number of pierces. Still though the biggest factor here is the quality of air I feed my Hypertherm.

Conclusion:

For my application, dollar for dollar this is the best THC on the market, and I did a lot of research.
With my machine using the Neuron System the "mean" of my cutting 3/8" mild steel material gives me height control around +/- .0025" which I believe is about as good as it gets for a voltage controlled system. Also the build quality of the boards and components used is first rate and installation was very straightforward. It's been rock solid, no oscillations, no runaway and I finally have confidence in a system. I can safely hit run and walk away.

Andrew Shad of Neuron is a very knowledgeable man and was instrumental in helping me implement this into my system. Anyone interested in torch height control should check his website and read the features, take it from me it works as advertised.

One other thing I should mention for any plasma system is the z-axis. A typical router z-axis like what I show in the photos is not really what you want and I am scraping mine. Plasma z-axis should be light, fast and accurate. Thompson Rod guided, antibacklash nut, fine lead screw drives are O.K for routing but are not the best for plasma. Never forget the speed vs torque properties of a stepper.
I am in the process of building a new 6mm lead NSK ballscrew with NSK guides driven head for the machine that will cut the weight in half and improve rotational efficiency to over 90%. One quick test is to remove your z motor and with two fingers move your z up and down. Grab a good ballscrew and you will never go back. A used NSK ballscrew is better than any new acme screw nut combo by miles. After a couple of weeks of trolling ebay I found a high grade NSK ground ballscrew for $69.00 which will outlive my grandchildren.

Hypertherm

I also must add a huge thank you to Hypertherm for there plasma systems. My Powermax 45 has been flawless for three years running hard and still cuts like the day I bought it. Great units!!!

Shawn