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Arcdroid plasma

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Some more cuts with it
 
How limiting is 26" x 15" in actuality? I saw that complaint a few times in this thread. Does the X2 addon mitigate the issue a reasonable amount?(15x48) I could see under 48" length being a mild issue(axle truss, front plate bumper, frame plating)

From what I've seen, it looks like the ArcDroid can be moved on a 4x8 sheet and a new 'zero'/'start point' sdet fairly easy.

I saw 2x2 table mentioned but didn't see something similar cost. Certainly not a 2x4 or 4x4.

My interest is more hobby/reproducability.
 
How limiting is 26" x 15" in actuality? I saw that complaint a few times in this thread. Does the X2 addon mitigate the issue a reasonable amount?(15x48) I could see under 48" length being a mild issue(axle truss, front plate bumper, frame plating)

From what I've seen, it looks like the ArcDroid can be moved on a 4x8 sheet and a new 'zero'/'start point' sdet fairly easy.

I saw 2x2 table mentioned but didn't see something similar cost. Certainly not a 2x4 or 4x4.

My interest is more hobby/reproducability.
The only things I've been limited on have been garage wall signs so far, buggy brackets and other misc small things I have had no issues. I've been eyeing the X2 addon, but I haven't ran into anything buggy fab wise to need it. I'm definitely more hobby/my own fab work oriented
 
Vs the little Langmire table... which is a better choice?

I haven't looked to hard at the Arc Droid as it's more money, smaller cut area and need to make a table for it but maybe I'm wrong.

I know they advertised it being portable, but I can't think of too many thing I need to cut in place.
I'm guessing it has a powered mag base like a drill?
 
Vs the little Langmire table... which is a better choice?

I haven't looked to hard at the Arc Droid as it's more money, smaller cut area and need to make a table for it but maybe I'm wrong.

I know they advertised it being portable, but I can't think of too many thing I need to cut in place.
I'm guessing it has a powered mag base like a drill?
From what I've seen, you don't need a 'table'... it looks like you can toss a piece of steel onto a pair of saw horses and go to town. The lack of having to buy a water table or the like for a few $k is attractive.

For securing it, it appears to be 'bolt' or 'clamp' on. So basically one could clamp it to the material to be cut makes it a bit attractive. I'd have to take a look at what Grind Hard(??) did on theirs.

The portability isn't what is attractive to me... the small foot print is intriguing.
 
The few videos I've wat he'd the operators had them mounted to a purpose built water table.
One was using an Eastwood table and they added a platform on one side for the ArcDroid to attach to.

Throwing it on a sheet of steel would only work if it's fairly thick and a large piece.

Fine if you're cutting on a full sheet if 1/4" but wouldn't work on stuff from the rems pile. Like making some tabs from a 12x12" piece of 1/2" plate.


Also them shilling it out to a bunch of YouTubers turned me away as well. And of those YouTubers, I can't think of any that actually use it beyond the paid for "oh it's so good" b/s informercial.
 
I'm not sure Grind Hard Plumbing was a paid shill... but they used it on a 40"+ motorcycle build on many of the brackets they built.

When I say toss it on a sheet of metal, I mean on a 'light' framed table under the sheet metal. I could easily see doing a 2x4 framed table with some angle iron stand offs as being a cheap route. Hell, I'd go so far as to buy an old solid core door with some angle iron stand offs for the material:homer:
 
I clamp mine down to my welding table, i built a swing up/down cutting table off the side to set metal plates onto to cut. If im not cutting things for a while i put it up on the shelf and fold the cutting table down. My shop is small, otherwise i would have bought an actual table. I have ran into an issue of a more complicated design being "too large of a file size" to cut, but it was a detailed sign. Grindhardplumbing uses the shit out of theirs and is why i got mine
 
I'm not sure Grind Hard Plumbing was a paid shill... but they used it on a 40"+ motorcycle build on many of the brackets they built.

When I say toss it on a sheet of metal, I mean on a 'light' framed table under the sheet metal. I could easily see doing a 2x4 framed table with some angle iron stand offs as being a cheap route. Hell, I'd go so far as to buy an old solid core door with some angle iron stand offs for the material:homer:

Gotcha.

I've never heard of them, but only plumbing videos I usually watch are Steve Lavamoniere (or however it's spelled)
 
Hard to say, that's smaller than mine but IMO you could still do a lot with it unless you are doing artsy shit.
 
I clamp mine down to my welding table, i built a swing up/down cutting table off the side to set metal plates onto to cut. If im not cutting things for a while i put it up on the shelf and fold the cutting table down. My shop is small, otherwise i would have bought an actual table. I have ran into an issue of a more complicated design being "too large of a file size" to cut, but it was a detailed sign. Grindhardplumbing uses the shit out of theirs and is why i got mine
Out of curiosity, how 'large' of a file are we talking? And how many details does that allow?

A lot of what I'm looking at doing is more brackets or similar that I could reproduce for myself(lots of common projects in my field). I'm not looking at doing overly artsy fartsy type stuff with war and peace on a piece of metal:lmao:
 
Out of curiosity, how 'large' of a file are we talking? And how many details does that allow?

A lot of what I'm looking at doing is more brackets or similar that I could reproduce for myself(lots of common projects in my field). I'm not looking at doing overly artsy fartsy type stuff with war and peace on a piece of metal:lmao:

It was this sign, I had to cut in 3 separate jobs to get it all cut out. It might have been something I did (or didn't do) with the file when exporting the dxf, I didn't reach out to the company and ask about
Screenshot_20240923_060336_Drive.jpg


I guess it's not thaaat detailed
 
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Looking more into it, I think its something in my cut setting adding to the file size

This forum post on their website makes me think its a me issue (like usual lol): File sizes to large
 
It was this sign, I had to cut in 3 separate jobs to get it all cut out. It might have been something I did (or didn't do) with the file when exporting the dxf, I didn't reach out to the company and ask about
Screenshot_20240923_060336_Drive.jpg


I guess it's not thaaat detailed
You probably have 50billion short lines instead of arcs. Properly programmed, that would be a very small file. Scans are horrible about that, how did you draw it?
 
You probably have 50billion short lines instead of arcs. Properly programmed, that would be a very small file. Scans are horrible about that, how did you draw it?
That sounds right

I designed it in Adobe Illustrator since that's what I use for work(non-fab work stuff), exported it to .dxf then imported it into fusion to get the cut file
 
That sounds right

I designed it in Adobe Illustrator since that's what I use for work(non-fab work stuff), exported it to .dxf then imported it into fusion to get the cut file
Not familiar with fusion, but some CAD programs have ways to deal with that. Minimum line lengths and creating arcs. Setting the minimum line length to .050 can make something like that 5% of the original size without making the arcs look too jumpy.
 
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That sounds right

I designed it in Adobe Illustrator since that's what I use for work(non-fab work stuff), exported it to .dxf then imported it into fusion to get the cut file
Illustrator dxf should be decent if the source was vector and not raster. But that is a lot of jumps where a screw up is easy to happen.
 
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I designed it in Adobe Illustrator since that's what I use for work(non-fab work stuff), exported it to .dxf then imported it into fusion to get the cut file

I'll almost guarantee that conversion ended up with a metric brazillion line segments for every curve. I get similar stuff from people that use various raster to vector conversions and have to clean them up to make them usable.
 
It was this sign, I had to cut in 3 separate jobs to get it all cut out. It might have been something I did (or didn't do) with the file when exporting the dxf, I didn't reach out to the company and ask about
Screenshot_20240923_060336_Drive.jpg


I guess it's not thaaat detailed
How to you reattach the A holes?
 
you have to bridge them
If this is something that you are going to do, get a CAD program now and start using it
IMO the CAD/CAM is the hard part of these deals.
Anyone considering getting a table for misc tabs and brackets should be 100% in their cad ability or atleast decently fluent.
 
IMO the CAD/CAM is the hard part of these deals.
Anyone considering getting a table for misc tabs and brackets should be 100% in their cad ability or atleast decently fluent.
Took me maybe 15 mins to figure out Fushion 360 enough to make some basic parts.

Now if they'd actually turn out correct with the plasma, no idea.
 
question for those of yall who have the arc droid, how often do you use the "tracing" feature? do you find it useful? Most of what I'd like to cut would be stuff that I design in CAD. Is it pretty straight forward to use digital files? or is it more geared towards "tracing" stuff? I've been wanting a plasma table for a while, but I just don't have space.

I would be using it with a hyperthem 45xp, mostly to cut small-ish brackets and such, I don't think the 26x15" cut area would be very restrictive for me.

And I'd love to use it to cut shapes out of some large/thick tubing that I got for free a few years back. About a dozen large steel square/rectangle tubing. Stuff like 8x8" square 1/2" wall, 6x12" rectangle 1/4 wall, most of them 6-8 feet long) to heavy for me to load them up onto a table, but I have a lot of them and I figured I could just set the droid on there and cut out what I need. It's free material just sitting there now. I've cut a few things out by hand, but would love to make something more intricate with CAD.

Do you have to "recalibrate" it every time you move it? or could I just clamp it down onto the tubes and cut away?
 
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question for those of yall who have the arc droid, how often do you use the "tracing" feature? do you find it useful? Most of what I'd like to cut would be stuff that I design in CAD. Is it pretty straight forward to use digital files? or is it more geared towards "tracing" stuff? I've been wanting a plasma table for a while, but I just don't have space.

I would be using it with a hyperthem 45xp, mostly to cut small-ish brackets and such, I don't think the 26x15" cut area would be very restrictive for me.

And I'd love to use it to cut shapes out of some large/thick tubing that I got for free a few years back. About a dozen large steel square/rectangle tubing. Stuff like 8x8" square 1/2" wall, 6x12" rectangle 1/4 wall, most of them 6-8 feet long) to heavy for me to load them up onto a table, but I have a lot of them and I figured I could just set the droid on there and cut out what I need. It's free material just sitting there now. I've cut a few things out by hand, but would love to make something more intricate with CAD.

Do you have to "recalibrate" it every time you move it? or could I just clamp it down onto the tubes and cut away?
I have not really used it much, maybe once since I got it earlier this year? I'm pretty quick with CAD and all I've done fab wise is brackets and free standing things like the axle stand for the table. However once I get into needing to make non-square panels or fill plates using cardboard cut outs to mock up then I'll probably use the tracing feature. I think that is where the feature will be amazing for I think
 
Took me maybe 15 mins to figure out Fushion 360 enough to make some basic parts.

Now if they'd actually turn out correct with the plasma, no idea.
I'm going to bet that you 'THINK' you figured it out, :grinpimp:
there is a lot going on
design, files, export, import, table, work area, machine settings, shop environment........
 
I'm not sure the tracing feature is as useful as it seems although it definitely could be in the right applications.

With the ability to import jpegs into fusion etc. you can "trace" from a image with pretty great detail. Given the work envelope of the arc droid I bet you can do just as well with the image as the stylus.
 
I'm not sure the tracing feature is as useful as it seems although it definitely could be in the right applications.

With the ability to import jpegs into fusion etc. you can "trace" from a image with pretty great detail. Given the work envelope of the arc droid I bet you can do just as well with the image as the stylus.
I have a different set up, but I imagine it has to function close to the same.
You can trace, but there is soooooo much clean up node wise, I really don't think you gain any ground time wise
some of the files, I think I heard my computer downshift

There are times where I stylus would rock, or even better one of those old school tracing eyes that you slide under the machine
 
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