You guys have changed my frickin’ brain chemistry, damn you all (with love). Cutting wood is cool. Cutting aluminium is cooler. Now I’m chasing steel.
Looked at the JDGarage site from the “Neat!” thread which says you guys in the US can get CNC-compatible plasmas for $170 (!!) Anything I can find around that price here is HF start. With all the horrible EMI problems that causes.
Seems like some people on here have successfully used HF start machines, but after a lot of work fighting the EMI hydra. Talk me out of trying that and into buying a non-HF start plasma, please. (It does rather take the project out of ‘screw it why not’ price range though)
Bought a “Hitbox HBC45II” which claims to be low-frequency pilot arc and all that goodness. At £99 even if it is no good for CNC I’ll probably keep it around.
Well. I actually bought two, because, um
Order has gone through, let’s see if they fulfil it…
Just looked it up on aliexpress, $170 USD with very fast, free shipping, for my location, it says 1-5 days.
AJ, this is a little off topic but when you receive it, how about giving us a little review?
Assuming I do receive it (I should get at least one of the two!), certainly, though it’ll be my first plasma so I don’t really have much of a frame of reference for how good it is relative to other no name machines
So, back to the question at the start of the topic…
We’ve had a few topics of machine users that have built plasma tables, and I believe even @vicious1 has one. I wonder if we should have a forum sub-section for plasma machines. It would sure make looking for and looking through all those builds easier.
From there, it would be a lot easier to ask questions of those in the community running those machines.
Yoinking this thread out of LowRider CNC since I don’t think I’ll end up mounting the torch to Ratrider. Not imminently, anyway. I have vague plans to build a smaller portable-ish table for that machine which would make it more reasonable than the silliness of an 8 x 4 ft plasma table, but I think I’m going to put a pin in that until spring.
Had a very initial play with the Hitbox machines today. First impression… they’re hilariously tiny. Like, loaf of bread sized!! I didn’t have a banana for scale so an actual ruler will have to do, if you can read it with my crap photo.
Second impression … hmm, 2.5mmsq flex with a standard 13A plug (max is usually 1.5mmsq). Looks pretty good for a chinese british plug though, sleeving on the pins that should have sleeving, none on the one that shouldn’t, and a fuse carrier. Didn’t check if there’s a solid chunk of metal in place of a fuse however! I probably should.
But I’ll likely lop the plug off and replace it with a 16amp ceeform anyway, some british standard 13A plug & socket combinations have a habit of melting under sustained full load!
Both initially appeared dead - plugged in, switched on…faint click then … nothing. No life from the display or the torch. A bit of fiddling and one sprang to life, while the other is completely DOA as far as I can tell. Oh well, back to Ama-sin it goes!
Test cuts on some scrap aluminium and steel suggest it does what it says on the tin. And you can really see why I need machines to do my dirty work given how wobbly my handwriting is (partly down to the shock of the thing working….)
No attempt made to dial cut settings in there, literally the first plasma cut I have ever made, I just wanted to see it cut something so I knew I didn’t have to return them both.
It claims to be able to cut up to 10mm steel. I didn’t have any on hand to test, but given the ease with which it blew through the thin stuff it might even be plausible
Duty cycle remains suspect, as does the ‘non HF’ claim. “Blowback” start normally has a sprung torch head, right? Nothing in the torch on this machine seems to be sprung. So vaguely suspecting that it might just be a regular HF start machine with a non-HF sticker on it…
I’ve had an old Anycubic Chiron lying around for a long time with no extruder and a smashed heatbed (thanks UPS!), so I butchered that into a very basic 2 axis gantry.
I expect I may find that the leadscrew axis can’t move fast enough. But it was a very quick build out of stuff I had to hand, and will probably suffice for some test cuts.
As expected, the Hitbox has no CNC port, so I’ll need to hack it a bit to get automated torch trigger. No bother.
Control board wise, I think I’m going to borrow the jackpot out of Ratrider for the proof of concept. I have an assortment of 3d printer boards I could probably use but the ease of use of FluidNC has really won me over!
It may ultimately end up with LinuxCNC to match the Hackspace’s superbox, as I think that’s where this machine is eventually going to end up - I don’t have or particularly desire a compressor able to keep up with the plasma personally. Probably need to give it endstops, a z axis and THC before I let the general population loose on it…
That’s all for now. Hopefully will get a chance to marry the gantry and cutter on Sunday. The mad scientist grin I had when I first built Ratrider is well and truly back!
I’m glad to see mine go to use finally, though many is the time I’ve wished for a printer with that build volume. The damage UPS did to it meant it needed more round tuits than I ever had available…
One of these days I’ll build a huge printer of my very own, though being able to use a laser cutter has alleviated some of the desire (making 19” rack panels).
Well I was just about set up for a test cut and then I blew up the jackpot. Hopefully dropping a new ESP in cures it, as I have a spare one of those, but no spare Jackpots. D:
I did try and use the trigorilla board that initially ran ratrider at first, to avoid gutting ratrider, but fluidnc has spoiled me…
Well see. I thought a metal table would be sensible for a plasma machine. Which is probably right. But I left the Jackpot case on the LR4…
Didn’t have an idiot moment instantly, I put cardboard under the board, but it must have slipped off at some point and presumably shorted something important. No magic smoke release, but no sign of life other than a few green LEDs either.
Going to cover the back of the board in kapton next time!
(It does rather take the project out of ‘screw it why not’ price range though)
Order has gone through, let’s see if they fulfil it…
(partly down to the shock of the thing working….)
