[KE6CVH]

Hello, I am not sure where to post this so am doing my best here. I am new to plasma CNC and own a Chinese made 60 amp hand held plasma cutter. I am retired US military after 28 years and then another 4yr 8mo stint as a DoD contractor in Afghanistan then Bahrain. I'm an electronic technician/communications engineer by trade in my former life. I am now living in the Philippines with my wife and 6 year old triplets. I'm wanting to put together a CNC plasma machine. Customs here is very corrupt so ordering a full size table is out of the question because the price will be doubled by the time I get it. Machine shops and welding shops are plentiful here and labor is crazy cheap. I can order from USA and China but each order is ultimately coming as FEDEX. Is it possible/recommended to build most of the gantry? I need help in deciding a design that I can put together here as much as possible and that I can maintain when it breaks down. Advanced thanks, Mike Kendall

Forgot to mention, I am OK with purchasing the key parts to put this together but the smaller the parts the better for shipping costs

[ovrrdrive]

Take a look at building a Precision Plasma LLC gantry kit and then use CandCNC electronics. Precision Plasma gives you plans for the table and components, and everything you need for the gantry. CandCNC gives you complete motor/control kits that are complete control kits. I'm in the process of building o a table suing them now and they're pretty high quality kits. Plus you get the support of both companies to help you get up and running.

[KE6CVH]

Take a look at building a Precision Plasma LLC gantry kit and then use CandCNC electronics. Precision Plasma gives you plans for the table and components, and everything you need for the gantry. CandCNC gives you complete motor/control kits that are complete control kits. I'm in the process of building o a table suing them now and they're pretty high quality kits. Plus you get the support of both companies to help you get up and running.

Hi ovrrdrive, I'd seen good info on precision plasma llc and when going to their website it says only sells within USA with only exception to Canada

[KE6CVH]

Hi again ovrrdrive, I spoke to Ron at precision plasma llc. Great guy and I have a plan to ship to my brothers house where I will forward from there. Thanks

[ovrrdrive]

I researched everything for about a month before I bought everything and I kept coming back to PPLLC. Ron has been great so far. I'm almost done building the frame and getting ready to start hooking everything up. Every question I have asked him has been answered really quickly and he's definitely willing to help. You'll be happy. It's a well thought out and complete kit. You just buy steel. Glad I could help.

Btw, which kit are you going to get?

I went with the Magnum HD because eventually I want to route too. It's pretty massive.

[KE6CVH]

Hi ovrrdrive,

I called Ron pretty late at night so did not take notes like I'd like to have. From looking at the website the magnum HD seems to be the ticket as you mentioned it may handle a router. He said people just put a board on top of the bed when routing to keep the wood out of the water table. If I remember correctly looking at the website the main steel that I'll need that is specific will be 1X3 and 3X3 square tubing is that correct? It did also say something about 3X3 angle iron also if I remember. I need to double check all the steel is available in country is the reason for asking. Am I correct on the steel needed? I will want the torch height control and all other options. From the conversation it seems to be worth the extra money up front in the long run of using it with the extra options. I'd likely go with the powermax 65 as I'm not sure if anything above that will be possible on my power here at the house. I have combined solar and grid electricity here so it should be pretty stiff at the site of use. There is 6awg coming off the power pole transformer at 230vac and I've got 5kw of inverters with 8kw of panels feeding them. I will likely get some ac coupling with another inverter some time in the future with more panels. Any advice on the local materials needed to purchase is greatly appreciated. I have two full time workers here, welding equipment on hand with a cheap chinese 60a plasma cutter, and access to local machine shops. The economics of everything is skewed here. You would think everything is cheap being I can pay a worker handsomely at 10USD per day but it really isn't the case as everything is a logistical nightmare from buying to getting through customs. Best regards, Mike

[ovrrdrive]

My frame is mostly 3x3x1/8 tube. You can use lighter but as I'm a welder in training (self training at that) I went with the thicker recommended 1/8" wall to make the welding easier. You do need some 1 1/2"x2" tube to go under the rails, and the rails themselves have to be 1/2"x 3" cold rolled bar. I can get hot rolled around here but I'm going to have to make a drive to find CRS. According to Ron the rails have to be CRS though so I'll do what I have to. Other than that, the 3x3 tube for the gantry needs to be 14ga and there's also a piece of 1x3" tube for it too. some 1x2x3 plate for the bottom of the legs and a piece of C4 channel for the cable track but I think you can use just about anything there that will hold the cable track if you can't get that. There's a pretty detailed cut list in the print folder on his website.

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/cnc-pl...rjet-machines/

The angle is for the waterbed if you go that route. From what I've seen in build threads most people just find a shop with a big brake and have the water tray bent up so they just have top make the 4 corner welds. I'm going to try going that route if it isn't too expensive but I haven't ruled out doing the angle and sheet with the 20' of inline welding if I have to. I haven't gotten that far yet.

As for extras I bought all of the upgrades for the table they had. I bought the Hypertherm 083300 kit with both torches, an addon RS485 card, the ohmic ring, HyT connection kit and the Command CNC linux ethernet enabled controller. Since if the machine works to make money for me I'll probably upgrade it from 5x5 to 5x10 in the future I went ahead and got the 5x10 kit for the gaantry and the extra long wires for the motors now too. I just about broke the bank doing it but I knew if I didn't get everything I would wish I had and the name of the game for me is to have a table more capable than I am so I'm not limited by it. I'll attach some pics of where I am now so you can see what it looks like.

[ovrrdrive]

Oh and I modified the plans a little. I lowered the second bar from 15" down to 21" so I could build in a place for the Hypertherm and maybe a toolbox and I had some extra steel so I added the 2 offset center supports too. The table is a tank. It shouldn't budge at all when I'm using it. I'm also going to come up with some removable castors too to make it easier to move it out to the driveway for cleaning.

[KE6CVH]

Hi overrdrive,

Wow, you are really doing it right. I was kind of scratching my head on the cold rolled steel and will need to study the blue prints some more. My rough guess is it is like the difference between a forged receiver on a rifle and a regular receiver (night and day). Is the ohmic ring the torch height control upgrade? I was also wondering the differences between the linux and the ethercut. That one is a big decision for me as I really hate how Windows can be unstable.
Ron is awesome. He also recommended to me Dan from Speed Monkey. They had provided kits to speed monkey and now they have a new design that is lighter. This makes a huge difference for shipping overseas to me. Dan and Ron are friends that grew up in same area is my understanding. Because of huge shipping limitations I decided on the speed monkey with Dan's concurrence that it would be best in my case. What an awesome guy who is willing to recommend a different product at the expense of business out of his own shop since it is more suited! I kind of feel a little guilty about it but the speed monkey kit should be just fine. Differences on the tube are minor as one is the same and the other is a 2 x4 square tube. The lighter design can still handle the router fine business. If I was INCONUS I would go precision plasma LLC and when I get a makerspace going INCONUS will try the precision plasma unit. I've got to run today and see what is available here as far as english unit square tubing. I don't think it would be wise to try to get cold rolled steel here as it would likely be stated it is but turn out not being that. I'm even a bit scared on getting english unit steel here as sometimes they say it is english unit and it is closest metric equivalent. Now I'm wondering if it is possible to get the hypertherm 65 and put it in check in luggage on the plane. I've not been in USA since 2012 and really need to make a trip.

Best regards,
Mike

[ovrrdrive]

The ohmic ring is just an ad-on part for the torch that allows the THC to determine when it touches the metal electronically instead of having to push down on a switch. It's just a better way to do it and when cutting thin sheet it's supposed to work better. It can give problems when using a water table but from what I've seen the post flow on the plasma blows most of the water out of the way so it may or may not be an issue. I figured it was better to have it and then figure out when the best time to use it was. It's only like a $40 part.

Hypertherm Powermax 65 & 85 Ohmic Retaining Cap 220953 - Power Plasma Cutters - Amazon.com

As for if CommandCNC is the way to go over Windows only time will tell if I made the right decision on that. According to Tom the newer windows versions are more worried about cloud based storage, apps and media center than running the OS and the linux version was the direction the industry was headed. Plus it was a little cheaper. There are a few videos of it on youtube but not much. I think they just went live with it a few months ago. It seemed more future proof to me so I went with it. Linux is a more stable os than windows anyway. Like I said, time will tell.

Hunting for steel isn't any fun. Hopefully you find a steel yard there you can trust. The CRS isn't cheap and is harder to find but according to Ron isn't an option. I guarantee they have it in china so you might just have to bite the bullet and pay through the nose for it.

It doesn't surprise me one bit that Ron recommended products from another vendor. His and Tom's reputations are the main reasons I went with PPLLC and CandCNC products. I need all the help I can get.

[eloid]

hello guys Im new to plasma cnc world, I build my own 3 axis cnc several years back.
Where can find a schematic for interfacing the plasma hardware. Can someone post a schematic of bob interface and the related thc stuff?