Plasma brag

Well, it is finally here and cutting steel. Hypertherm HPR 260 XD with true hole and ProNest attached to a RetroSystems Hornet HD 5 x 12 foot table.

Delivered Friday. I did the basic assembly (positioning and putting the cutting frame 4.5K lbs over the air table 5.1K lbs and creating the earth ground network to damp RF/EMF interference) on Saturday. Technician from Retro Systems came in Monday to do finer assembly and wiring. Trained a good chunk of today on basic software and took a full day out of this week's production time in about an hour and a half this afternoon. We've got another day of training scheduled for Thursday to go over the finer points of ProNest and any questions I come up with tomorrow slicing out parts.

Downloading ProNest while I'm typing. Totally stoked. Huge investment but since I let out word that it was arriving work for it keeps coming in. That is reassuring since it's the biggest debt I've ever incurred. But I spent about a quarter of the machine cost last year with a laser/plasma outfit making parts for the fab work I'm doing. Between the reduced cost and taking 6 weeks out of my turn time I expect to be very busy.

I'll shoot some picture's tomorrow afternoon (for those with the no photo = didn't happen mindset.)

Dang, I feel like a little kid at Christmas.

Download just ended. Gotta go, more info later.

Todd

Thanks for buying the Hypertherm HPR260XD as well as the (Hypertherm) ProNest Cam software package. All of Hypertherm's employee owners will do everything possible to ensure your 100% satisfaction!

You have the top of the line of plasma cutting with your High Definition class cutting system!

Jim Colt Hypertherm

Way too busy week, wild on so very many levels. I could write for hours but I'll limit myself to plasma issues and then post a couple photos. I only got photos of one job. 3/8 A36 plate. 4 x 10 sheets. 25 parts per sheet. 1 sheet per hour 1,800 inches of cut in 4 hours. Minimal dross on the back. A few seconds with a wire brush and it's gone. Way cool.

Much of the crazyness isn't even new-machine-tool related but certainly part of the mix.

Training (provided onsite by RetroSystems) was thorough and he'd have stayed all week if I had wanted him to. I just took a day and a half and said I'd call when I had problems. He answered three questions over the phone before he got home. Oh yeah, one of the contributing factors to brand selection is that the table is manufactured 45 miles away!

The Micro Air smoke/dust collection system is still being built (also manufactured in Kansas and about an hour drive) so I've been making a bunch of dust and smoke. I can't wait for proper evacuation and cleaning, but production can't wait either.

The Hypertherm CAM system seemed strangely counter-intuitive at first. The built in nesting in the RetroSystems control is pretty good so at first I stuck with it. After playing with the CAM system a bit I think it was just the heat and the 15 hour days making me a little dizzy. I'm liking it now.

Gotta post the pictures and go. My Scout Troop does a fireworks tent as a fund raiser and I'm on the schedule in... Dang, I'm late.

What kinda price tag? Hope to have a use for high def plasma in just a few years time now if things play out as hoped on a certain product line. Waiting for laser cutting can get old at times :-(

Cut some 1" this afternoon. Awesome, but profoundly loud and way too smokey without the air scrubber. Good thing I don't have anything heavier than 1/2" on the books for the next few weeks until the Micro-Air filter arrives.

Pix and then more words.

Alright, a key to the pictures. Shot 1 and 2 simply cool sparks. The machine sounded like a 10,000 lb whistling firework at 260 amps.

Picture 3 glowing dross in the slag pan 2 feet below the cutting deck.

Shot 4 edge quality on the downward (dross side).

And finally, Shot 5 the pierce side (a quick scrape and the back splash is gone) of a .850" diameter hole in 1" material.

For adama: Full package with 200 amp upgrade on my electrical service, rigging, shipping, 4 zone air table capable of supporting 5 x 12' of 5" plate (one tech actually said 6" but what's an inch), HPR 260 DX Plasma supply, automated 5 gas manifold, Sensor Torch Height Control, 4 axis machine (each side of the gantry has its own servo and drive, so I actually only have X, Y and Z control but they call it 4 axis), laser plate alignment device, pneumatic air pressure booster, refrigerated air drier, "True Hole" capability, Hypertherm CAM and ProNest software, several sets of each size of consumables from 30 amp to 260, two torch heads, a Micro-Air 400 CFM air scrubber with silencer, spark arrestor, long life nano-fiber (fibre for you proper English types) filters, air surge particle shake out, collector etc. (which should deliver in 3 weeks) and undoubtedly a few specials that the long days and a few beers are keeping me from remembering = $151K.

Last year I spent over 30,000 with a plasma/laser vendor for their services. I lost a couple gravy jobs because (although I was the low bid) I couldn't assure the turn around that was desired. My main vendor seems to be overbooked and my business seems to be an afterthought to them. Sometimes it takes two weeks to get a quote and then 4 to 6 weeks is their standard turn time from purchase order. It was just time. Normally it is a 4 month build time (after placing a 50% down payment) and a couple weeks ago the sales guy called me and said that they had a demo model with everything I wanted on hand. It had 1.1 hours cut time and I could have it right away. I realized that if I jumped right now I could save the first 2 machine payments just by doing the work I already had PO's for in house rather than paying someone else to rip out for me.

It is a total draft horse of a system. Build like a steam engine except 1000 ipm fast. I'm babbling on but I just spent an ungodly amount of cash for something that is working out really damn well and the beer seems to be shutting off my editing system.

I am stoked. This thing rocks!

Time for bed.

Nice!

I gather the 260A is the plasma current, what sort of supply are you running?

Any chance of a video of it running a cut or two

It's a pile of cash but I reckon it's a decision you won't regret, especially with quality like that.

Makes my little 3x3' table and 30A HPT torch look like a christmas cracker toy

Envious, a bit yes

To supply the HPR I had to bring in 75 amps of 480. I only have 240V available here so I had to add a transformer (ah, there's something I didn't add to the list of parts the other night.) It takes 150 amps of three phase 240 to get 75 amps of 480.

I'm definitely making a note of this company for when we finally get our own plasma cutter.

As price tags go, thats nothing compared to what a laser would be and theres just too many headaches that they bring to make one fit with my future needs unless fibre really improves and the price drops too! Humm definitely going to have to look into that nearer the time. I won't need more than 1" sheet capability either. Not sure how that will affect the costs overall, but yeah, going to have to give that some serious thought. Currently i seam to be getting ever more stuff laser cut, but theres some premises in my future, and giving over some floor space to some kinda profile cutter would work just fine. But i have gotta have good cut accuracy and especially good hole accuracy's, but not necessarily laser quality.

Dross wise, thats not bad, have seen worse off a laser for small holes, But the edge quality looks really great in those pics and thats something you can't improve with a quick swipe of a cold chisel :-)

Adama; I hadn't even touched it with a brush at the point I took the pictures. That was straight off the machine. A few seconds with the wire cup brush and the edges look significantly better than I've received from very proud laser folks. New machine and new consumables to be sure but it is undoubtedly meeting my expectations.

Another picture of some 1" parts after a quick brush. The holes are better than I expected. I was told that I could not get good hole quality in holes smaller than the thickness of the plate. Those are .850" holes in 1.000" plate and they are round without an obvious lead in scar and mostly true and parallel. Some of them have a slight taper yielding a very slightly smaller hole at the bottom. a couple were .005 smaller at the bottom.

5 thou from top to bottom is IMHO better than laser especialy in thicker plate. Heck, i have not seen burnt holes that good ever.

The laser im around cuts plate thickness diameter holes with ease, its as you drop smaller than that you have to get cleaver. Problem seams to centre around how much heat your putting into such a small space. That said, this laser unlike the last has a lot more power settings for a given plate thickness, in effect you can reliably cut 3mm holes alll day in 10mm plate, but its not alll that much faster than drilling, the laser power and frequency have to be turned way down, dwells as you enter the cut go up and its just slow to let the heat dissipate. I see no reason why you can't with enough messing get the plasma to go smaller still, just going to take a fair bit of tweaking time to get things just right.

FYI the three people i have ever known that have owned a laser cutter are akin to top of the line sports car owners i know, often they have more money in the machine's than there own house! Often they will do nothing like the experimenting - tweaking most plasma operators do every day, trying to cut better and faster. Then there's the whole laser inefficiency thing, CO2 lasers to cut 1" plate max, need over 200 amps of 415V (our std over here) three phase power. They are hideously inefficient and bloody costly to maintain as they age too. High def plasma seams way more efficient, machines less than a 1/3rd of the cost too and if thats all cut on air, cutting costs must be a lot less too. Going to be real intresting to see if the likes of hypertherm can ever get the plasma quality to be a closer match to good laser cutting in the thinner stuff. They certainly seam to be getting ever closer.

Just curious, another month into it, are you still loving the Hornet plasma table as much? We're just about to pull the trigger on a Retro-Systems unit ourselves. Very similar to yours except for the draft table. Also, how do you like ProNest? If we do this we'll be switching from SigmaNest (12 years) to ProNest. Thanks for the info, keep us posted.

El M;
The plasma and table have been rock solid. Once I got over a couple things that I considered counter-intuitive (my 16 year old said "duh dad of course it works like that") pro nest does a quick job of building nests and pointing out conflict. I'm sure once I actually do the tutorials and spend some time on line I'll figure out how to better tailor it to my specific needs it will be even more powerful.

Adama;
I do believe there may have been a little "irrational exuberance" in my claim of .005 taper on holes in 1". I did measure that, but only once. I generalized from the first hole I measured. I haven't done a whole lot of measuring since but the edge quality seems to be better the higher amperage you run it. Smoother cuts at faster settings. The consumables aren't significantly higher than the lower amperage ones. The electrical consumption is obviously going to be greater. However, I got the first Post-Plasma electric bill yesterday and it wasn't a huge shock.

The air scrubber unit from Micro-Air is in the final legs of installation. (Much longer delivery time than originally projected.) Arrived Friday. Took a solid day and a half for me to erect. The electrician finished up yesterday. I've got to finish the ducting and then the factory tech will be out to fine tune the filter cleaning equipment. The Retro-Systems tech who installed my table and trained me said that there are lots of people who don't use air cleaning equipment. I don't know how they do it. 3 plates of 3/8 plate whittled into 22 parts each (about 30 minutes) and I can hardly see my forks to lift the next plate. That's with the doors open!

A friend came in and said that he was suddenly confused about his whereabouts; the air quality on Main St. had him thinking he was in Denver. I'll be glad when all that smoke is filtered and accumulating in a barrel. I feel like a schmuck with that smoke rolling out of my shop. Good thing I talked with the Fire Chief/Building Inspector prior to bringing it in.

I'm retired now but saw this quality of cut develop during my working career. What gobsmacked me the most was being able to take precut pieces one inch thick and stand them on edge without support. When I would check with a square before tacking I would be out less than a sixteenth at the end of a two foot square. Fitting today takes a fraction of the time it did thirty years ago. The same goes for the welding since the welder is not filling gaps or irregularities.

Yeah, good air filtration is a must with any thermal cutting process, the new lasser's extractors crap in that regard to the old one (the good old one was a Torrit from memory, and sucked like the begibes and was real clean to empty!).

FYI 75 amps of three phase really is nothing, our lasers chiller runs a real 80 amps service and thats just to remove heat from the laser. With it only costing during on time its probably not all that much extra a month, I don't know what duty cycle you get out of the plasma - or more correctly how much of a typical shift you can keep it cutting ie torch on time, would be surprised if it was even approaching 4 hours total in a 8 hour shift. Im willing to be it would cost a lot more in gas for a oxy fuel torch!

200 amps of three phase when you add all the equip together. The 75 amps is of 480 three phase (which is equal to 150 amps 240V 3 phase) and that's just for the plasma box.

Yeah, I'd be surprised if I average 2 hours. There are days I've gotten 5 hours of torch time and others where it has been entirely idle. I know that oxy fuel would be substantially more to operate, not to mention the cost of all the labor and grind stones to make the parts clean enough to weld!

I'm beginning to wonder how I got along without it.

T, laser is 125 amps 415V (our std over here), extractor 32A 415V and chiller is 80A 415V (though chiller on even a hot day only runs a few times a hour). Then you got a 20Kw or so air compressor if your cutting alu with air assist.

Yeah, that's a lot of juice!

power - remember that when you sent those parts out, whoever cut them paid an electric bill too. So unless you power is waaaaay more expensive than theirs, that shouldn't tip the balance away from your doing it yourself. (It matters, it changes the send-out/in-house equation, but it is always on both sides.)