DIY CNC Plasma Cutter for 300$

[Music] so for far too long now I've been doing my metal cutting and drilling the hard way for just years and today I'm going be upgrading the garage with a CNC plasma cutter not an expensive one but which is some stuff I picked up off of Amazon let's get right into [Music] it so we'll just be using two basic products to get this project rolling now the first thing we're going to be using is this laser engraver which works on an X and Y AIS just like you would see a regular CNC this is however just a little smaller in size now to make this to plasma cutter we'll be removing the laser head and replacing it with the plasma cutter end from this so getting started we're going to get this laser engraver unbox and we'll get it all put together and we'll operate this first then we'll move over to the plasma cutter okay let's start with unboxing and see what's in here so now that we got all these parts laid out in front of of us everything is looking like really high quality we're going to go ahead and get this thing assembled so we finished the assembly everything is set up and connected to the computer we've installed the software it is laser grbl is a software program and I've just thrown in one of my images and all we're going to do next is prepare to print that on this material that I have here and then preparation of doing that you come in here and you hit this Frame button at the bottom and what that does is outline it'll show you where you're at on your material so you can know you're centered it'll work its way around the whole perimeter as well as it shows you where it's at in the process on your screen and once it finishes that we're going to hit print okay so I've already scanned the border now you come to this top portion of this program this is the a play button you click that it's going to want to know that you're wearing your safety glasses which of course I am now it's going just going ahead and go here it is all done printing we can remove the piece you see that came out really good and pretty well detailed just considering that was a quick image that I threw in there this laser engraver worked great it was simple and easy to use so now it's time to move on to the plasma cutter we're going to get this unboxed we're going to give this a test cut then we'll work on integrating this to the laser engraver system [Music] so I got this thing plugged in and ready to go I'm currently have it running off of 2 40 this thing is very fortunate and comes with this 110 adapter plug which most things don't so I thought that was pretty cool we're going to turn this thing on and we're going to make show I'll show you the the amperage adjustment sure apparently showing at 21 we can go all the way up to 50 and then I can get the air connected to the back of it we'll adjust the the air pressure we'll bring this outside next and we'll start doing some cut test cutting all right so we got everything set up semi outside we're going to be cutting this 8 in thick steel I have the machine set to 27.8 and on the back this is where I got my air pressure at just over2 so we're going to set up and we're going to cut through [Music] this so you can see that left a little bit of the slag hanging off the bottom I'm going to try to increase the air pressure and we'll see if it leaves a better [Music] cut so I got a little bit of a better straight cut there a little less slag on the back we're just going to try and knock that off with a hammer came right off of there looks pretty good pretty clean cut now that we verified that both the laser engraver and the plasma cutter both work it is time to build a cutting surface and mount it to the bottom of this laser engraver and to make clearance so the actual plasma cutter head does not interfere with the framework of it the actual cutting surface needs to come up higher so to do that I've made a a box section that the laser engraver kind of sits over and that gives me a 2 and 1/2 in Rise which brings everything closer to the cutting head for our cutting surface we'll be using these I have 12 1 in by8 in thick steel plate and this will be creating a level surface for us to cut on all right so here the welding surface is all welded up and the idea is you take your piece of metal that we're going to be cutting out the CNC plasma and this will now be our cutting surface so we'll be able to cut through here all the slide will be able to push through so now I'm going to show you how the actual laser engraver will bolt to this and I'll show you the depth to where the torch is going to sit so now that we made it this far it is time to figure out how we're going to get this plasma cutting torch attached to the the laser engraver so what I did was remove the actual laser itself and what it did was Mount to this plate that will let you slide up and down to let you get the right measurement in between the surfaces now in preparation for the next step I've inserted a a piece of Steel it's 8 in steel in the middle of this it is threaded in and just bolted to the back of this aluminum backing plate so then I'm going to come back with this Automotive hose clamp and what that'll allow me to do is weld it directly to that steel plate like you see there and then I'll be able to come back in and drop in the torch itself and be able to clamp it to the actual head and we should be able to drive it around on the CNC so we're now far enough along that we need to do some wiring to make these two machines talk to one another now the only two things we're really worried about triggering is the actual trigger for the plasma cutter which is right here as well as the actual trigger that sends the power to run the laser now normally that's just an easy onew switch on the laser end of this thing there's for some reason there's three wires I'm just going to have to do some quick looking through it with a multimeter to see what power does what in the meantime we're going to do some basic wiring so what I wound up with using is an automotive relay that has a built-in fuse system to it so I don't have to worry about blowing fuses or melting down wires and then we're just going to need a couple little quick disconnect wires so we can disconnect the actual laser head and connect it into the wiring harness we're going to make to integrate it into this machine for Simplicity I'm going to use these wire ends and what they're going to do is allow me to connect to either pole of this switched system on the machine and they push right over the prongs inside the unit so I'll be able to come out of here with my wires and we'll get those to the relay okay I have my multimeter hooked up to the lead that goes into the laser now I've determined both of those are grounds that will trigger that thing for different things and this one all the way out here on the end that's providing power so you'll see my multimeter read 12.35 now so now we know this is the power wire that we need to properly wire into the relay if you don't want to go through this whole wiring process I have a much simpler wiring solution which I'll explain in a few minutes so my basic wiring is done I have my automotive relay completely figured out I have my power lead that goes to the laser engraver and I have my two ends right here that I'll go to the CNC machine and Trigger that on I'll show you a quick little image of the wiring diagram here so you know how to wire it to the back of the relay now with that in mind we can hook everything up and see how it works okay now that we have everything connected the torch head or the trigger lead is now connected to the head of the laser cutter I have my other connection made to the trigger sensor on the actual plasma cutter now over to the software I've upgraded at this point I am now using something called light burn it actually lets you draw on air so that's what I'm going to try working with and working towards that I got some suspension tabs I'm going to have to make so I just drew this one up I'm going to cut it out and we're going to try and upload it onto this interface and then cut it out let's see how it goes now we are in the light bur program and I'm going to do a dragon drop of that picture I took into the screen next you will want to make it as big as possible so you can see it better now using the line tool you will trace the entire perimeter of the object next select the circle tool and drop it right over the picture lining the circles up make sure you check the height and width on the top to ensure it is a perfect circle here is where it gets interesting delete your original picture and you are left with your part outline select the entire image and now you can set the dimensions to scale on the top left corner there is the width and now the height lastly select the part and place it anywhere on the screen you want to cut your parts before we cut we need to go over to the right and adjust the cut speed click on cut then the advanced settings tab change the cut speed to match the metal thickness you were using I will leave a complete list of cut speeds in the comment section click okay at the bottom then you can move over and hit the play button all right so I went ahead and made my first Cuts I tested this out out on some E8 inch and I made these Circle Cuts just perfect cut out of these circles uh then tried another one and you can see right about here it stopped halfway through and again it stopped halfway through on this other one um so what I believe happened is there was a signal disruption caused by The High Frequency start and high frequency of the actual plasma machine itself and the actual signal box that tells the cutter what to do and since then I've been doing some troubleshooting and I've not been able to get it to work again so I think I come up with a solution is probably easier than the first idea let's let me show you that now so to simplify the process we're completely getting rid of the automotive relay system I was using initially and we're going to the human relay which is just a simple push button we'll push it to start the arc let it go through this entire cut motion let go it'll cancel the arc motion and it'll should finish the cut let's W this up all right here we are wired into machine I have it running now all this does is right right run right into that trigger switch sensor and when I push this you're going to hear the relay in the machine kick [Music] on okay it looks like we're ready to cut I have my suspension tab program already on the machine already on light bur ready to go I have my thumb activation switch ready to go I've already ran this thing through its Drive run without the plasma cut running and it seems to running at a good speed so all I can do now is turn on the machine hit the thumb button hit play on the computer and hopefully it [Music] cuts all right that first cut looks like a success that's pretty clean all the way around I probably let it pause too long there and I got some little bit of extra cut very minle draw or slag on the other side it's going be pretty easy to clean up so I think next up I can need to make in total I think 16 of these I do have another project I want to start next all right so next up I need to make a bunch of the I need to make eight of these actually these are some chain link looking things I just need these for another project to bolt two different bolts together and this will just kind of combine the two of them so one of these will go on either side so I'm going to run this through the program make a digital file and then we'll cut it out now to repeat the same process in the light burn program drag and drop the picture of the link we just took I can now remove the suspension tab I just made enlarge the image add our Circle cutouts and now tracing the perimeter delete the picture and resize the image to the proper Dimensions move it to a good location on the cut surface this time I will cut multiple parts and just copy and paste the image and now we can cut it out so I got two of the four cut out I was putting the other ones on here randomly and if any slag got in my way it would kind of hold off the actual placement of the machine it kind of get lost where it was at and I kind of have to start over so these two came out good I'll print out two more and I'll show you how these things both together and on the other end here are those links that I made that are made to hold these two bolts together did the trick all right so I got my suspension tab just cleaned up and the idea behind it is you get your he joint missing the high Miss alignment spacers at the moment but you'll get the idea you'll be able to through bolt this be able to weld it right to the chassis it's going to be a two frame chassis and this is how that'll look so back to the wiring I did not have the best of luck with that relay system figuring out which one was a signal wire from here and how it worked and integrated with that was kind of difficult did take some time and unfortunately at the end of it this box gave up on me and I had to go this route so if you're moving forward this might just be the easier way to go get it working with this and then you can integrate the wiring into it later so on the software side of this machine the laser grbl that came with this works well enough if you're just taking a stock image printing it over under that little home screen you really can't change the size of it but it will cut it out for you now I moved over to lightburn because it lets me actually take photographs integrate that picture onto the actual screen and change and manipulate the sizes of it as well as changing the cut speeds which is really important when you're changing the thickness of your material moving on I may I may try to get into Fusion 360 because it's a lot more advanced and probably a little bit more user friendly and I will try to integrate that into this machine as well all right let's talk about so does this thing work yes it absolutely does it is useful in the garage about total this thing cost me just a little over $300 I will continue to use this in the future making these little cutouts would just take me hours to do by hand not to mention mess my hands all up Mak me tired so moving forward is this thing as awesome as a $8,000 industrial machine no and it does only cut some small parts but it is useful for the garage so if you have some extra time on your weekend and you want and you like to mess with stuff like this why not give it a shot I'll leave the links for both of these items on the description below I'll let you try it for yourself as always thank you for watching hit like And subscribe and we'll see you on the next [Music] build

Channel: Scantron's Garage

Views: 21,336

Keywords: amazon, ebay, diy, cheep, budget, cnc, cnc plasma, cutter, table, conversion, laser, laser cutter, arc droid, crossfire, eastwood, versa cut, langmuir, shopsabre, torchmate, simple, premier plasma, arclight, metal, best, how to build, crossbow, project, vevor, use a wiper motor, easy, how to, laser engraver, cut 50, build, light burn, 2d, tools, arccaptain, lotos, tooliom, s7, yeswelder, flameweld, ssimder, herocut, mellcom, hobart, biltek, arcfony, bestarc, plasma, titanium, harbor freight, hypertherm, amico, vulcan, CUT-50P

Id: G06Rc-mzcUU

Length: 20min 27sec (1227 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 15 2024