Plasma Cutting System

PlasmaCAM 4x4 CNC Plasma Cutting System | eBay
This seems like a neat system so I tried to run some numbers.

If I could get $200 for an odd-shaped piece of steel I cut on it, as is, in just 3,500 parts, (no scrap) I'd have the sucker paid for! Well...... at least then I could start working on the cost of the building lease, material, labor and how about that electric bill? Then it occured to me, what's the odds that it will cut 3,500 pcs. and still have anything left to cut with and the above all put together still hasn't paid for any advertising, (need lot's of that to get $200 for an odd piece of steel) taxes or turned a profit.

Is this the going rate for stuff like this? Looks like a couple of guys could carry it, how much a pound is it? What the heck is it made out of? Could it possibly require 5% of the computing power that the computer I'm using has, it's only 2D. Yeah, yeah, couple of small servo motors, (are they Made in the USA?) and maybe some guy had to reverse-engineer a little, simple X-Y software. My $80 Epson printer has pretty good 2D resolution and the routines were part of the price.....so....

Bob

Good one Bob! Got my chuckle for the morning..

Walter A.

Actually....you may want to take a second look at the PlasmaCam machine.....I have owned two of them....their original model, and now I have the 4' x 4' DHC2 model....equipped with a Hypertherm Powermax85 plasma. I don't know why the ebay ad has such a high price, but the PlasmaCam (made in Colorado) sells for under $12k. I use it it a home hobby/fabricating shop. It is used occasionally, however in the first 6 months I owned the present machine I worked it a lot of nights and weekends for contract plasma cutting...and easily paid for the machine (with plasma and computer around $13k)

The machine is of very lightweight construction....which helps with its motion control...plasma likes reasonably high speeds (around 300 ipm on 16 ga steel) and good acceleration.....so the light weight gantry and servo drives are pretty well suited. I 3/4" material with excellent results.....with cut part accuracy in the plus or minus.015" range, which is more than adequate for many weldment part applications. The PlasmaCam has an integrated z axis, arc voltage feedback torch height control as well that uses a unique sample and hold process......it senses the mecahnical height of the torch, samples the arc voltage at the beginning of the cut...and locks onto that height. No operator experimentation to get torch height accurate.

I work for Hypertherm (plasma manufacturer), and am very aware of the wide range of cnc plasma offerings out in the field....there are over 85 manufacturers (worldwide) of these machines. You can buy a 4 x 4 cnc plasma for $100k, and you can buy one for less than $10k. They are not equal.....but some of the entry level machines that have hit the market in the last 10 years or so are great machines for the small sop, the maintenance dept., or for the hobbiest shop. PlasmaCam, Torchmate and others are selling many of these low cost machines, and have many happy users.

Here are a few pics of parts I have cut with mine! Ist pic is a lift bracket from 3/4" steel....cut at 31 inches per minute...no cleanup required. 2nd pic is a test cut on 1/4" steel, with holes from 3/16" through 1-1/2" diameter, as cut. 3rd is a bracket cut from 1/4" plate that required tapped holes....which were cut at about .188" diameter, then drilled with a Cobalt .201" drill, then tapped 1/4"-20, last, some logsplitter parts from 1/2" steel with 1/2" bolt holes....all of these are cut with a PlasmaCam machine.

I think the point was not so much about the machine but the listed price. At least that is the way I took it. But I really liked the looks of the parts you posted. Were the holes for the logsplitter parts drilled or cut?

Walter A.

Looks like another happy ebay seller. Put obvious no sell high price up. Then when they contact you sell it off ebay and avoid the damn fees.

Mebfab said:

Then when they contact you sell it off ebay and avoid the damn fees.

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Isn't that the program you use?

Just about gave up on ebay.

Very impressive cuts Jim and if some of my hand cuts were in the picture....

At 10- $20,000, sure, reasonable pay off potential but $700,000.

I guess Mebfab probably nailed it but the manufacturer placed the ad, I guess there's a nod-nod code going on but it just flat turns me off, oh well... but here I am giving it web presence....

Bob

The 1/2" parts were cut, not drilled. There is about a .040" taper in the holes (bottom smaller than the top) with the Hypertherm air plasma I use, so I simply over size the top so a bolt will fit through the bottom. If I need more accurate holes (more cyclindrical) I make them slightly undersize and drill with a cobalt drill....the air plasma edges have a nitride hardening from the nitrogen content in air.

Jim

Walter A said:

I think the point was not so much about the machine but the listed price. At least that is the way I took it. But I really liked the looks of the parts you posted. Were the holes for the logsplitter parts drilled or cut?

Walter A.

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It was one of those deals that the wife did not completely approve of.....until she saw that it only took 6 months to pay it off! I'm wondering how she gets away with having five expensive horses in the barn?

Jim

Robert Campbell Jr. said:

Very impressive cuts Jim and if some of my hand cuts were in the picture....

At 10- $20,000, sure, reasonable pay off potential but $700,000.

I guess Mebfab probably nailed it but the manufacturer placed the ad, I guess there's a nod-nod code going on but it just flat turns me off, oh well... but here I am giving it web presence....

Bob

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I suspect the true reason for the super high price tag is that it causes their listing to turn up at the top of the search and/or category pages since most ebay pages list items by price in descending order. I see this "marketing tactic" used in other categories I follow on ebay. The cost for this listing is just "advertising" with sales at this artifically high figure not expected, but many views and interest generated, hopefully leading to sales at the much lower "real price".

Hey there are idiots out there... it only takes one dumb enough to buy it.

I've been building CNC plasma cutters for years. In a home, or small shop like Jims, I'd use a plasma cam or a torchmate in a heartbeat. Given an operator with a brain, they work just fine to move the light mass of a cutting torch or plasma torch around. They wouldn't last a couple days in most steel fab shops, but then even some really stinkin heavy full sized machines have issues.

Things like guys loading 4" thick plate slabs and banging it purposefully against the insides of the gantry to help line it up, then wondering why the machine keeps going out of square. Turns out they sheard the bolts holding the end of the gantry on...

Or slamming into the torch carriages with some 2" plate and cleaning them all off the machine...

There was a time I tried to introduce a lightweight high speed machine to the market, but most shops wouldn't buy it, sicne it looked to light duty. We had to double the size of the linear slides that carried the torch cariages, not becasue it needed it to carry the mass and deal with the inertia, but because ours "looked to small". It's silly when you have to build something way overkill just so it "looks adaquate" to do the job.

The Torchmates and PlasmaCams of the world have found a great market niche....there are far more of these lightweight machines sold annually as compared to all of the industrial machines combined. I agree with Stuart about these machines not holding up when subjected to tough conditions in a 3 shift a day high duty cycle shop.....but the fact that there are around 20,000 Torchmate machines, and likely a similar amount of PlasmaCams installed in small shops and home hobby shops around the world indicates there is a good market!

Jim

jimcolt said:

It was one of those deals that the wife did not completely approve of.....until she saw that it only took 6 months to pay it off! I'm wondering how she gets away with having five expensive horses in the barn?

Jim

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Only 5? You have it easy..... My wife moans when I get anything and she has 11 hayburners!

I have had a Plasma Cam on my want list for about 8 years but i have no where to put it yet...Bob