Beginners Guide to Plasma Cutting and Plasma Gouging

what's going on guys my name is brandon and today we're going to talk about everything you ever wanted to know about plasma cutting stick around [Music] welcome back guys and a lot of you have a lot of questions whenever i post plasma cutting stuff and obviously we need cutting tools in the metal working shop and a plasma cutter is just another great tool to add to your collection let's get going for this i'm using my cut 55 ds and this is a dual voltage 110 220 volt plasma cutter from yes welder now all of the plasma cutters that are out these days are pretty much similar to this in design that there are dual voltage they're all digital now when i say dual voltage what that means is that you can plug it into 110 or 220 and you don't have to do anything there's no switches and there's no settings it it automatically detects the current within the unit and adjusts everything accordingly and what that means is if you have this plugged into 120 volt it's only going to go up to 35 amps so what does that equal into cutting thickness we're going to talk about that further down the road in the video and when it's on 220 volts then it will go up to 55 amps and what does that mean in cutting thickness we'll talk about that also so when you receive your unit they're all going to come pretty much the same this one has what's here in the united states a standard 110 120 volt plug on the end of it and they also supply this universal plug which allows you to go from that receptacle to a standard 220 volt welding plug this is all standard here in the united states if you have a 220 volt welder that will plug right into that receptacle for our demonstration we're going to be running on 220 so it's just a matter of plugging that into that adapter and then it's just a matter of plugging the adapter into your 220 volt welder plug so what are some of the things you can do with the plasma cutter well one of the things you can do that it does really well is cut oddball shapes you can scroll out trace different things it does a great job with that it'll also conduct any metallic material that can be aluminum stainless steel steel copper mild steel it will cut that another thing that a plasma cutter is good for is it's called plasma gouging and what you can do is if you have a weld that you need to remove you can turn the torch on its side and gouge off the weld and get rid of it basically melt the weld away we'll talk about that here later in the video now you could use a plasma cutter to cut pretty much anything that you're cutting in your workshop but i find what this does really well and does best is cutting plate steel now whether it's this plasma cutter or any other they're all going to consist of very similar things and what you're going to have on the back of the machine generally is you're going to have an air regulator because that's what a plasma cutter runs on it runs on air and electricity that's it now you have an air source that comes in that you have to provide we'll talk about the requirements there in a little bit there's an adjustment on it so you can adjust the incoming air of how much is going into the machine and out the plasma gun you're also going to have a separator or a way to drain off any moisture that collects in the air well having dry air is extremely important when you have a plasma cutter we'll talk about that also now for air i have a older 35 gallon craftsman air compressor five horsepower that supplies air to my shop but if you don't have a big air compressor you can always use something like this this is just a small pancake compressor that i have goes up to 150 psi 2.6 scfm at 90 psi so this will work just fine too the only difference between this and my 35 gallon craftsman is that with a 35 gallon craftsman i can cut for quite a while before i have to let the air compressor catch back up with this maybe i could only cut for like a minute and then i'm going to have to stop cutting let the air compressor build itself back up and then i can resume cutting again that's really the only difference as far as an air compressor this will work however it's not super ideal it will absolutely work to cut with your plasma cutter if this is all you had obviously having a air compressor that has a tank that has a larger storage volume is going to keep your air compressor from having to like restart so often so it'll allow you to cut longer that's it i mean we're only talking you know 30 40 psi of air pressure it's not like it's a ton of air pressure it's just kind of like the constant volume is what you're working for but like i said what i found is i can overcome that by simply just stop cutting and let the air compressor catch back up if you need to and then cut again it's really not that big of a deal then you just plug this on your ear fitting that's all that's required to run a plasma cutter we have air and electricity and we're ready to cut however we do have a few settings we need to take care of but before that i want to talk to you about some of the components with this for connections on the front of the machine you're going to have something that leads out to your plasma torch a couple wires which are going to be for the trigger and then you have a ground connection that you need to hook up for this particular unit the plasma gun is 13 feet long it has a little shield in front of the trigger and then this is where it cuts now this is called a pilot arc meaning you don't have to make contact with the work and then pull the trigger for it to initiate an arc the pilot arc you can actually pull the trigger and it will actually start cutting now why would that be important as having a pilot arc versus having one that you have to make contact with well the pilot arc works great as far as cutting through rust cutting through paint because remember you have to have a ground you ground your part then you pull the trigger and then you can start cutting without a pilot arc you'd have to make sure that the tip of the gun made contact with the metal then you could pull the trigger and then you could cut so on painted surfaces that could be problematic with a pilot arc it's not an issue you can pull the trigger and it'll burn right through the paint initiate the ark and continue on and this type of gun can also be used with a cnc machine and have it be all robotic that's one of the features as well that can be done with this plasma cutter plasma cutters are extremely simple to use and maintain there's very few components that need to be replaced on this and the pieces that do need replacing occasionally are called consumables now this would be the cup that goes on it it's made of ceramic and it just protects all these metallic parts from making electrical contact striking it into your work where you don't want to make contact very seldom do you replace this piece of porcelain but occasionally you will and it's usually due to dropping it on the ground and this shatters then the next piece is the nozzle this is what's called a drag tip the reason this is called a drag tip see this little star pattern here that just gives the molten metal that you're cutting a place to exit and go because the plasma shoots out the center of this i don't know if you can see that it's open but it is that's open through the center the plasma shoots out through the center that's where it does the cutting and then the molten metal from the piece that you're cutting kind of squirts out from the edge so you just hold it against your work piece like that or better yet to lengthen the life of your consumables hold a short gap really tight gap off your work that'll help extend the life but typically i just drag them then you have the center electrode and that's this piece here so primarily these are the two pieces that wear out over time depending on how dry your air is and how thick of a metal that you're cutting and the material that you're cutting will determine how long these last however they are super cheap and like i said these are the only pieces that you replace with a plasma cutter because they need to make a good contact screw them just finger tight and just give them a little bit of tension same thing with the nozzle finger tight give it a little bit of tension and just like that that's all there is to it see i got another plasma cutter down here guys and what i like to do is keep my consumables in a container like this just keep them all together i think i picked these containers up at the dollar store or something like that it was you know nothing fancy but that's what that type of plasma cutter uh takes for consumables they're all a little different but that's what the torch or for that one takes so you can see i just kind of have them all organized out in a nice little organized tray just makes it easier when you go to grab your consumables and as you can see i don't use those ceramic tips too often because they don't really break unless you're dropping them to give you an idea a pack of 10 of these would probably last me at least a year and they're about 20 bucks and in my opinion this is much cheaper than buying oxygen and acetylene and having to deal with all that all you're dealing with like i said is electricity and air and 20 consumables that are super inexpensive to buy so with our consumables in our air hooked up in the unit plugged in the next step is to set up the plasma cutter so you got to set it up just like a welder for the material thickness that you're cutting so for here i've got a piece of inch and a half angle iron set up for this demonstration and i also have a material thickness gauge and if you want to know where you can get this or any of the other tools that you see me using all the links down below but as you can see that's set up for eighth inch or 125 thousandths that's what our material is right there so now we're going to optimize our machine for that material thickness so the next thing you're going to want to do is head over to my facebook page because unfortunately youtube won't allow me to attach attachments to my videos click on photos and then scroll down and you're gonna find a chart on this page right there click on that and this chart is where you're going to find out how to set your plasma cutter up so there we see we have 8 inch right there and it's saying 20 amps if you scroll over and what does the psi say for 8 inch 30. so that's what we got to set our machine for 20 amps 30 psi so now we turn on the machine i will talk about a couple things right here on the gauge face we have a gauge that tells us our psi this adjusts our amperage this right here uh tells us that we're ready to cut then you have up here 2t and 4t what 2t is is means you pull the trigger and it starts cutting you let off the trigger it stops for t is you pull the trigger then you let off and it continues to cut you pull the trigger again and let off and it stops cutting now 4t would be good if you were hooking this up to like a cnc machine it would initiate the torch and then let off it and then it just continues to cut it's like cruise control on a car then here's our power indicator the next one over here is an over temp indicator so if for whatever reason this machine should overheat what will happen is that the it'll stop cutting so you won't be able to cut any more of the torch and the fan will continue to run to cool down all the electronics until it's within its parameters again and then it will start being able to cut again this next setting here uh just let you know that your consumables aren't in right so if this light is on that means that your consumables aren't probably not tight enough you don't have a good connection within all your consumables at the end of the gun and that's what we talked about here making sure that you just snug them up a little bit with a pair of pliers so we needed to be 30 psi of air so you can see right now it shows that we're about 45 maybe so the way to set your ears you just press this and that'll engage the solenoid valve that's that's how it works for this machine not all of them are the same but they all basically have a very similar principle you have to set the air on your machine so that's showing right around 35 psi we need to be at 30. so we come around to the back raise this cap up because that locks it and then to lower it you turn it counterclockwise if we needed to raise it we'd turn it clockwise and now i'm turning the valve on the back counterclockwise until we're at 30 psi and there we are so that's all set now our amperage is said 20. there we are okay so now this machine is optimized for this material that we're cutting eighth inch inch and a half angle remember earlier when we talked about how thick of metal can you cut when it's on 110 versus on 220 well check this out so looking back at my chart on facebook again we can see this 30 amp so you can cut quarter inch with 30 amps you can cut 1764 on 30 amps 9 30 seconds goes up all the way to 1964 at 30 amps and then it jumps to 40 amps for 5 16. so somewhere between 1964 and 5 16 remember the machine will go up to 35 amps 1964 in the metric system is just a little over seven and a half millimeters so you know you can definitely cut well above quarter inch on 120 volt power and to give you a visualization what 1964's look like i've grabbed my drill index this right here is quarter and this right here is half inch that's the biggest i have in this kit 1964 is right here so on 110 volts that's how thick of metal this will cut that's pretty thick when you compare that thickness there to the thickness right here of eighth inch on 220 volts this will cut just over three quarters of an inch or just a little over 19 millimeters in thickness so what's unique to this machine and not my other machine is that when you run this on 110 you have to change your drag tip over or you should to optimize it so right now i have a 45 000 tip in it because it's on 220 but if i wanted to run it on 110 all i got to do is unscrew this drag tip and put in a 30 thousandths drag tip which comes with it and it's all marked it's embossed on the side of the drag tip so put in the 30 000 you can run it on 110. 220 put in the 45 thousandths so the next thing we need to do we need to make sure that it's grounded well and you can see i've got the part clamped down to this work surface here and i have my ground right close by it's obviously a little bit better if you can have your ground hook to the work piece but it won't matter in this situation if the piece was a little bit longer i would uh hook it to it but for demonstration purposes i'm trying to keep the ground out of the way so that you guys can see what i'm doing so but yeah make sure you got a good ground and that sometimes you might have to uh scratch away some of the metal if it's got you know it's got paint on it you might have to take a wire wheel and or a flap disc and just grind a nice bare spot so you got good uh conductivity to it now before we start cutting the next thing we got to talk about is safety now i know a lot of you guys that have used plasma cutters your big complaint is that you can't see uh when you're cutting well i have the same problem guys it's the same thing with me now the minimum recommendation for lens shade when using a plasma cutter for like a homeowner type one that goes up to say like this one 55 amps would be somewhere between the shade of a four on the low spectrum like if you were cutting around 20 amps up to like a five if you were cutting at 55 amps well i can't see on either i can't see on a four i can't see on a five it's problematic for me i can't condone this or tell you uh that you should do it but this is what i do i use tinted safety glasses and i've done it that way uh for years never had a problem that doesn't mean i won't some somewhere down the road but for me i cannot see the line that i'm trying to follow with the shade four i just can't when i use a plasma cutter so that's what i use tinted safety glasses i'll have a link to these glasses down below like i said maybe someday i will have a problem with it but right now i don't and i can see perfect through here i've never had arc flash using tinted safety glasses then with anything you want a good respirator back in a day this with cartridges was like 10 12 bucks it's a 3m they're probably not that cost anymore but the reason i like this one is it's a p100 and it will fit underneath your welding helmet some people will tell you that these respirators are not made for welding they absolutely are if you go to 3m's website and you look up the 2091 cartridge these are made for welding fumes they're not just a particulate for sweeping dust these are designed for welding and i like them because they fit underneath my welding hood so it also works good for fumes coming off your plasma cutter then you're going to want to have something covering your sleeves long cotton shirt long sleeve shirt or jacket something like this isn't overly ideal because it has a lot of frayed ends on it and these frayed ends are what catch fire when you're welding don't ask me how i know and then you're going to want some gloves and the correct answer for this would be you'd want welding gloves but i personally use just regular cheap gloves that you can pick up anywhere the drawback is they do have a little bit of nylon on the back so if you get a spark on nylon it'll actually melt the nylon and actually go into your skin so you got to be careful with using these but that's what i use that doesn't mean that i'm condoning that for you so now with our machine turned on all our safety gear in place let's talk about cutting and technique now the ideal situation would be to hold a slight gap to the work piece you start right at the end of the work piece then pull the trigger then drag it along the material surface you don't want to hold it at an angle this way or that way or this way unless you're intentionally trying to bevel your workpiece you want to hold it you know perpendicular 90 degrees to the cutting surface but i have a tendency to not have a super steady hand so whereas this is a drag tip that we talked about i just place it on the work piece i just make contact with it pull the trigger to initiate the arc and then drag it along the work piece now just know if you're shaky and you're doing this and you're starting and stopping so it kind of like is jerky like cut stop cut stop cut stop that's what your cut will look like but let's let's do that we'll we'll cut off a little piece i'll try to do a good job i don't have like i said i don't have a super steady hand but let's let's cut this off now i'm not wearing a respirator guys right now just because i can't talk to you with a respirator and i could but you just wouldn't understand anything i'm saying so here we go i'm going to initiate the arc then i'm going to drag it along the material and then i'm going to stop now this plasma cutter will run for a few minutes it actually runs for one minute shooting air out the nozzle and what that does is that just keeps it cool it cools down this in case it gets hot that's just automatic so now let's take a close-up look at our cut and here's the cut guys i wasn't necessarily going for a straight cut i was just going to cut it i just wanted you to see what that looked like and what the finish looks like now if you look at the end you see how it's got that little bit of material that's left over there that's called slag or another name for that uh people will refer to it as dross and that comes off pretty easy and i'll show you how that happens all you have to do to remove the draws is take a chipping hammer and just chip it off on the back side that's it it comes right off really easy watch just like that see how clean and smooth that is we do the same thing to this side so now here is that edge that's completely smooth on the back side again like i said it's not a straight cut but i wasn't trying to go for a straight cut i was just trying to make the cut in general so but that's what's left with there's no burr there's no edge um it would require a little bit of grinding to get those little like serrations out of it and that's those little serrated it how it looks like it's kind of like jaggedy or sawtooth on the end that's only because my hand that's just the slight movements in my hand and you'd have to grind that a little bit to get that flush but a better way would be to use a guide and i'll show you so this next way is the way that i prefer to make a cut using a plasma cutter because it's cleaner and you'll see the difference so let's put a line on here to simulate something that you need to follow so there's our cut line right there and we'll cut off this piece right here okay all we do is line up our cutting edge and then we need to bump our cutter into the side of the cutting edge pretty straight forward so you just have a straight line you're just using this as a guide as an edge guide and now there won't be that little wobbly now it'll be nice and straight and smooth look how straight that is guys it's like a razor scarf now take a look at that guys see how straight that is that's like laser precision but this side right here i had a little problem i actually ended up getting it fetched up on something my hand wobbled a little bit so it's not perfect i mean there's not it's not a hundred percent foolproof but it does a really good job like i said this is not the ideal material that i would cut with a plasma cutter i really like plasma cutters for cutting plate that's kind of where it really shines but you can cut anything with it as long as it's metallic in another area where plasma cutters really shine is when you're working with scrap metal particularly bed frames for those of you that aren't aware bed frames are a great source of material they're typically an inch and a half by an inch and a half but the problem with bed frames is that they're hardened metal so what that means is that if you go to try to cut those on your band saw you're going to wear your band saw blade up in real short order i've i've done it it's hard on it you can cut them with a you know diamond cut off wheel or abrasive wheel that's fine but i'm not particularly keen on using abrasive wheels to cut just because it makes so much dust so that is another area where a plasma cutter will really shine cutting hardened metal such as bed frames now we mentioned earlier about plasma gouging and that is where you use the plasma cutter to remove weld that you've put down well here you can see we've got a weld something we were experimenting on or just testing out and let's say we welded this piece on but we don't want it attached to this piece anymore well you can gouge out that weld and i'm going to show you how you can do that so one of the first things i'm going to want to do is i've got to turn up my air and my amperage turn that up to let's say right around 60 and that'll probably give us about 50. roughly once we cycle the air on and let's turn our amperage up to about 40. now i don't particularly like doing plasma gouging for one it's not super precise for two it means i've probably made a mistake so i'm cutting something apart generally i like to use a diamond cut off wheel uh if i do make a mistake to cut the weld i think it's just cleaner but you can use a plasma cutter to gouge out a bunch of weld if you need to and this would be how you do it so unlike cutting with the plasma cutter you're actually going to hold this at an angle you're not going to hold it 90 degrees perpendicular to your weld you're actually trying to wash away that molten metal you just basically think of it like a garden hose is kind of the best way to describe it and you're trying to wash away dirt the plasma is coming out this way so you're holding it at an angle and you're trying to wash away that molten metal away from the weldment so let's give it a try like i said i don't particularly like doing this but let's do it it's hard on your consumables too you saw how fast that was it did not take long at all but there are some problems with plasma gouging and i think we're going to have some of them i'm hoping i have a problem so i can show you what the problem is but uh yeah let's uh break this off and i will show you some of the issues we can have there and there it is good i'm glad we do have a little bit of a problem so right here that's not too bad right there that's not too bad right there that's a little high spot right there that ridge but this area right here that's below this metal here so that actually gouged in to this parent metal this actual piece here so we've actually gouged out of that metal and and weakened this if if this was like a somewhat structural component that would have weakened it here we're good um we could grind this down flush actually let's grind this down and then we should be able to see this area right here being a low spot this looks like a little dished out place right here and this could be a problem maybe not but it could be let me grind it up and we'll take a look at it so here we are guys this is kind of what i was explaining we were high up over here so that's all good we plasma cutted that away but here we're low we've actually cut into the underlying metal although it's not much it it could matter potentially so that's just one of the drawbacks with using a plasma cutter so generally i don't use a plasma cutter to plasma gouge just because i don't want to run into those problems with a cut off wheel a diamond cut off wheel you don't necessarily run into that type of problem but if you need to cut a weld out with a plasma cutter you can so it's it's just a really great all-around tool i'm sure with a lot more practice if i plasma gouged more then i'd be better at it just like anything so maybe that wouldn't be a problem if i did it more often so that's all there is to it guys plasma cutters are a great tool to have in your metal fabrication workshop you can use them for a lot of things the more you use them like anything the better you'll get at it and the handy that they are like i said earlier i find that they really shine when cutting plate steel using a guide is super beneficial and if you have any questions about it or something i didn't clarify leave a comment or a question down below if you want to know about any of the tools that you see me using i'll have links down below for those as well and if you're interested in knowing a little bit more about this plasma cutter i'll have a link to that along with a discount promo code that's all there is to it guys i want to thank you for watching thank you guys for tuning in new videos every friday if you want to know what i'm working on before it makes it up to youtube you guys can catch me on facebook and on instagram and i want to let you guys know some channel news no longer am i going to be featuring any motorcycle content on this channel at all so when you guys come to this channel it's exclusively going to be metal fabrication and welding i've started a new channel and that channel is called motivated 207 in the 207 being main so if you guys want to subscribe to that channel i'll have links down below and that's going to be exclusively all motorcycle content it's going to log my journey this summer of a first time 50 year old racing motocross so that ought to be interesting hopefully i don't kill myself in the process until next friday guys i will see you then take care like comment subscribe go check out my other channel motivated it's on social media instagram facebook and on youtube and i'm slowly uploading all my motorcycle content onto that channel but we'll be focusing exclusively on welding content every friday on this channel thanks guys see ya bye [Music]

Channel: Brandon Lund

Views: 67,102

Rating: 4.8597884 out of 5

Keywords: Welding Metal Fabrication Steel Steel Fabrication Metal Welding Mig Welding, plasma cutter, beginners guide, plasma cutting, plasma gouging, welding, amperage, how to, diy, do it yourself, air settings, amperage settings, cutting with a plasma cutter, guide, tutorial, educational, setup, Beginners Guide to Plasma Cutting and Plasma Gouging, brandon lund, metal, metal cutting tools, metal cutting, welding tools, tools

Id: pmNVH1XtWBA

Length: 30min 7sec (1807 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 30 2021