adding a plasma cutter to my TM3

i've got a miller plasma cutter w/ a machine torch and i'm planning on making a customer torch holder and putting in a cat40 holder.

from what i've read, one of the big problems is smoke/grit from the plasma cutting getting everywhere and making a mess of the inside of the cabinet.

i'm thinking about either making some kind of water table to put on top of the TM3 table and maybe having a vacuum system running in the cabinet.

note that this is a hobby machine - it runs maybe a few hours per week.

has anyone else here done something like this? any advice?

My advise is simple...don't do it.


Plasma is filthy, dirty, grimy, smokey, gritty...and every other kind of descriptive word you can think of. Leaves a sooty residue that I am sure you don't want in, on and around your machine. Molten metal leaves splatter on everything under...ways covers, table,paint. I'd worry about it getting into the...well everything.

Shooting into water...that's alot of air pressure blowing at a puddle of water. I see wet, dirty filthy slimy muck all over the place.


We used to run a plasma cutter inside the building...not a good idea. Smokes up the place no matter what kind of fans and vents we used...leaves that residue and grit all over...not recommended.


However...if you really feel the need. Maybe consider a long arm several feet off the machine table to hold torch over a vacuum bench. The longer the better....




For short money I had bought a motorized Plasma table that traced around templates...worked pretty good. Today they have cheap CNC knockoffs of that machine, I used to setup outside and run. Soon found it was just better for me to profile in the CNC as cutting thru the HAZ caused me more tools and grief then profiling. Got rid of it all years ago.

Gee, if I had your money, I could burn all mine!

I can't think of many ways that you could come up with to ruin a milling machine, quite as effective as that.

Save the mill for milling, farm out the CNC Plasma requirements, or buy or build a dedicated table for the Plasma.

Cheers
Trev

The smoke coming off the plasma will eat up your ways and ball screws within a week, especially on a tm3 where theres no way covers.

Why not reverse engineer this and make an arm that can be attached to the table, then have your plasma table on wheels. Roll the table up to the front of the machine, lock the wheels/ posts down.

with a 20" Y travel, your arm would be around 36". Have a plate that has (4) countersunk holes for the outer T slots. Use socket flat head bolts near the center of X. Should get you within 1/2" of center @ 36" out. Have a dedicated work offset at G53 or at G53 X-40. -20. which would be the corner of the sheet. Then make all your programs from that corner. The torch will be attached to the arm so you wouldn't have to mess with plumbing it thru the machine. You would even have a fully functional mill in 20 min!

You would be able to cut a full 20x40 area. If you were to do it in the machine, you would loose a lot just from clamping.

You could even make a Terrain follower by having the torch attached to a spring loaded plate. So going front 20 ga to 7 ga, you will have the same standoff.

My one concern is the federate from the tm3. 400 IPM might be a little too slow for light ga. You would need to think about having something like 30-40 amp. I think on 7 ga, 400 IPM would be pushing it with an 130 amp torch.

Let alone all of the damage the soot will do to the machine, but think about all of the electrical noise you will be putting into that machine, when ever i weld on any CNC we always make sure the entire machine is completely powered down. you could easily fry the control system.

Have you looked into a DIY plasma table kit? I would recommend something along the lines of that, if you build it, you could make it a collapsable unit if space is an issue.

Cheers,
-AW

CNCASW said:

but think about all of the electrical noise you will be putting into that machine, when ever i weld on any CNC we always make sure the entire machine is completely powered down. you could easily fry the control system.
Cheers,
-AW

Click to expand...

We Tig and Mig weld only feet away from the backs of 4 CNC mills day in and day out for years. Haven't seem a problem other then needing to clean out the cabinet filters a bit more often.

Back in the day I mounted a cutting torch to an arm that attached to a Mazak table. Worked like a charm. You should use that method instead of cutting inside your mill.