Portable CNC Plasma Cutter?

[BMW R-1150GS]

Any of you guys have any experience with one of these chinesium units?

About 5X20 foot for less than three grand... just might be worth an experiment.

Hoping someone else took the gamble and will be able to encourage me to get one of these things.

 

[tracyb]

about 5-6 years ago i went trough all these type options..

i ended up building my own table, mostly in typical diy fashion, however i made the top and table base separate, capable of sitting directly on the material to be cut. the top is made mostly of aluminum and not at all heavy, then i also made all the wire connection easy to plug in. so to transport mobile you had the top as one piece and the controls/ computer as another. bottom was made 4x8, and the top made to be used as big as 5x10. of course not to hard to index cuts for much larger work areas. this was all set up in a 8.5x24 enclosed trialer, basically a full mobile shop. all was ran off a cmqd10k gen, tb325 weld/gen, and a 13hp honda air compressor. cmqd was just enough to push 65amps from the plas and ran all the cnc control from the inverter circuit on the tb325.

i tried to push the mobile aspect as much as i could and where i operate i thought it should have taken off but it didn't. at the time i was only chargeing $65/hr. now my rate is almost double, and got more work than i can handle. But, i havent had the table 'mabile' in 3years.


more on the point of the specific type of machine in the video, from what i remember... they are slow, too slow for allot of plasma operations. and no x-axis/ height control. i think they would be okay for oxy fuel cnc cutting but not much more.

i put a bunch of thought in to mine to make it efficient to setup and take down but in the end it wasn't worth it at all. i'll soon be building anouther table, as mine being used every day since it was built is showing its age and there is much better build setups and controls now. the new table will not be build to go mobile.

 

[AK_F250]

more on the point of the specific type of machine in the video, from what i remember... they are slow, too slow for allot of plasma operations. and no x-axis/ height control. i think they would be okay for oxy fuel cnc cutting but not much more.

This was my experience as well. Dads got a big ($$$) flame cutting table in his shop and it doesn’t have nearly enough speed for a plasma unless you were cutting thick stuff. The Chinese ones probably don’t have the hardware or software capabilities to handle a z axis or thc, so you’d end up having to do a complete refit or some sort of ghetto standalone z that wouldn’t work right. You can build a nice table for 4K plus raw material if you build everything but the Z axis/torch holder from scratch.

 

[BMW R-1150GS]

The one I am looking at enough to actually email the manufacturer...

Hauwei HNC-1500W-6. Cut speed 50 to 750mm/ min. And it does have an X axis. They build them for either oxy or plasma

It will be an in shop system, rarely traveling as a smaller rail out to an occasional boat yard job. Just spent seventeen grand on aluminum, and another eight grand to get it cut up. So the interest in an affordable table solution that will be used a couple times a year on 1/4 inch 5000 series alum.

They look to be lacking in rigidity, and I am imagining any product support might cause puppies to yelp a little.

Thanks for the info...

 

[I Lean]

750 mm/min at max is REALLY slow. Definitely not going to be happy for much plasma use. That's only 29 IPM.

 

[tracyb]

The one I am looking at enough to actually email the manufacturer...

Hauwei HNC-1500W-6. Cut speed 50 to 750mm/ min. And it does have an X axis. They build them for either oxy or plasma

It will be an in shop system, rarely traveling as a smaller rail out to an occasional boat yard job. Just spent seventeen grand on aluminum, and another eight grand to get it cut up. So the interest in an affordable table solution that will be used a couple times a year on 1/4 inch 5000 series alum.

They look to be lacking in rigidity, and I am imagining any product support might cause puppies to yelp a little.

Thanks for the info...

based on this, 100% dont waste your time. with china garbage.

17k material and 8k cut sounds reasonable with lack of info.
is the cut cost plasma? that sounds wrong.


you said 5000 al and boat yard... to me that= router cut, or water jet, but the budget suggests management that doesn't know shit and just wants to save money??? am i right?


also makes me think you dont know shit about cnc cutting.



for cutting a couple times a year you dont want or need a cnc plas, even more so for aluminum. taking off from what i said above about the cnc i use daily, i should also say i have my suppliers cut for me as much as possible. when i provide them with a cut file or nested cut file depending.... it is far cheaper to have them do all the cutting. you'll ruin more in material before turning a profit on the machine.

also dont count on much, if any product support on a low budget cnc. most of the cost of any good cnc is product support. the machine itself is pretty cheap to produce.


everyone thats asks about buying a cnc without first learning how to operate a cnc, other than on a hobby level, is more often than not going to throw away allot of money.

 

[Talon2006]

I started my journey when a member made a 400 dollar cnc plasma table.

I need to update my build thread but my table is basically cutting now. I think I have 3500 in it?

I went with Linux. It’s a pretty badass controller. Even Jim colt himself gives it props...

 

[bgaidan]

I started my journey when a member made a 400 dollar cnc plasma table.

I need to update my build thread but my table is basically cutting now. I think I have 3500 in it?

I went with Linux. It’s a pretty badass controller. Even Jim colt himself gives it props...

Let's see the update!

LinuxCNC? How is it for plasma? My mill runs it, but I didn't build it and I've had trouble troubleshooting when problems arise. (Could be because I'm linux-tarded.)


I have a ~4'x5' router that I got dirt cheap earlier this year. I have less than $1k in to it and I'm really debating refitting it for plasma. It really would't take much and I think I'd get more use out of it than I do now as a router. Or maybe make it where i can easily convert it back and forth....

 

[Talon2006]

Let's see the update!

LinuxCNC? How is it for plasma? My mill runs it, but I didn't build it and I've had trouble troubleshooting when problems arise. (Could be because I'm linux-tarded.)


I have a ~4'x5' router that I got dirt cheap earlier this year. I have less than $1k in to it and I'm really debating refitting it for plasma. It really would't take much and I think I'd get more use out of it than I do now as a router. Or maybe make it where i can easily convert it back and forth....

I need to make an update... but it is badass. I used a Linux cnc plasma at the local makers place and it crashed all the time.

this system is super stable, and if I lose an arc or get a torch trigger I can restart the cut where it died. I can also back up the cut. There are a lot of features I have not used yet too.

 

[Brad]

Nothing to add other than that thing cuts slow as fuck AND the up/down travel is the fucking Z axis