PLASMA CUTTING FOR BEGINNERS, PLASMA TIPS AND TRICKS

[Music] so my affair today's video is going to be a little crash course in plasma code so if you've never done any plasma cutting before you probably think that you just kind of pull the trigger and away you go but there's definitely some skill to it and there's some trips and tips of how to get the best results out of a plasma cutter so I'm going to show you them today alright so first up I've got two different plasma cutters here they do exactly the same thing they are different a little bit different in the way they were different price range this is the arktech 50 amp think this one was about 750 quid this is an AFL cut 40 P about 400 for that one main difference is the power this is a 50 the for a this will cut through thicker material one of the other big differences is this will run off a lot lower compressor pressure 50 psi working pressure on this this requires much higher I think it's 75 or 80 so if you've got a small compressor it's really worth looking into the working pressure of whichever plasma car you're gonna get because otherwise you're gonna be running out of air as you can if you've got like a big industrial compressor then it's not going to be an issue you can buy plasma cutters that actually have the compressor built into the plasma cutter but I will see if you've got a compressor there's no need for that but if you're doing mobile mobile stuff they don't see a complete unit with a compressor and it would be pretty handy I've got another cold so you're gonna have to weave snot and dribble I'm afraid couple of other differences torches are different on these this one has like the proper area so Universal plasma torch this one has its own gonna talk they take different different consumables so you like to buy the specific consumables for whichever torch you're running and then yeah the back you've just got ya ya catch oh I just push that one up into the little this is to catch moisture out here compressor because plasma cutters work best with really dry air so I've got two more as little catch tanks on the outlet of my compressor as well and seems to work pretty good like that you can get air dryers and all that sort of stuff if you're gonna get really serious about it this is the IFL torch and this is like a long extended nozzle which is nice this that plasma cutter is aimed it like for the automotive sort of thing so it's got a higher current pilot arc or something for cutting through pain and then these little extended tips are good for like getting down into little corners these torches have a lot more parts to them and then they do they do a lot of different kind of tips for those torches this one it's the our tech one I only got one kind of tip for this which looks like that I'm not sure that these are designed to be dragged directly on the material because these this torch head would come with this a little piece that would raise the of them off the metal and I've had people say you damage the plasma cutter dragging the tip on the metal but this higher tech plasma cows five years old tortures five-years-old you do go through more consumables but this thing still works perfectly few reasons why I like to drag the tip directly on the metal rather than like hovering it you see people do it and they'll hover it just above like a few using like an obviously torch or something the reason I will drag it directly on the metal is first reason as it completely blocks out the site of the arc so you're not looking at the bright arc and secondly I think you just get a better cut you will you do definitely go through a lot more consumables but they're pretty cheap yeah let me use this one for sort of like finish stuff car body stuff the actual plasma cutter itself is a lot smaller and lighter so if you need to log it around or move it around but if I need to do any heavy cutting I use the AR tech 50 all right safety these are shade 5 glasses it's what's recommended for plasma cut in up to 50 amps I think or 60 maybe respirator you want filters are obviously rated for vapors fumes dust everything not just like a little dust mask doesn't actually do anything and then gloves I wouldn't recommend that you use this type of glove but for me personally I would rather wear a glove where I can feel what I'm doing and I feel like I'm much less likely to slip when I can feel the torch and I can hold the metal with the other hand from trying to use like fit leather gauntlet type gloves and you can't really feel the buttons on the torch I feel like I'm more likely to have an accident doing that so I feel safer in these but if you're new to plasma cutting probably not the best idea just go for like so proper thick leather gloves or similar so the things that are really going to make a difference to how good your cut is it's just your tips need to be in really good condition if they're all blown out and melted you're not going to get a good cut you need consistent air pressure from your compressor and it needs to be set exactly what the Machine recommends and the third thing is going to be how you how you hold the torch how you actually make your cuts like what you use to make them so I've got some different thicknesses of steel from thin to thick and then I've got a piece of aluminium or if you're in America or aluminum and I need to cut a piece of that out as a piece missing off the back of my recovery truck so we'll cut these bits of Steel then we'll cut some aluminium and I'll show you how to get the best results out of it so first thing is when it comes to set it out this one runs from minimum of 20 up to 50 this one goes from 10 up to 40 so this this little one will never get turned down off of 40 and this big one is normally always on 50 unless I'm cutting something really thin and the reason for that is so rather than adjusting the current on the machine you can just adjust your travel speed when you're cutting and you're gonna get the best cuts when you match the travel speed to the current perfectly so I mean by that is I could cut this thick piece at 50 amps I cut this really thin piece of 50 abs like a cut this 3 mil piece at 50 amps and get really good cuts on all of them just by adjusting the travel speed of the torch it's like kind of self-explanatory but obviously you're gonna need a slower travel speed to cut through this then you are this and if you're cutting through this you're gonna want a really quick travel speed the same applies that I could turn that down to 30 amps and I could probably still cut through that but I would have to really slowly drag the tip across it and it would put a massive amount of heat into the pile so you could look at that and think I need to cut that you know really low as low as the plasma cutter can be set but you'll spend much more time with the torch actually on the piece of metal and you'll put way more heat into it whereas if you crank the machine right up and zip across it really fast you'll put much less heat into it and when you're cutting in when you're plasma cutting thin stuff warping is a problem so I will show you the difference and show you how to find that like sweet spot and when you find it when you get to the point where you've got the travel speed and the power set right you'll get a really clean alright soo if you've been watching me work much in my other videos you know I always use a straightedge when I'm plasma cutting you'll very rarely see me like freehand cutting with a plasma cutter and that's just because you just don't get very good results with it little tip when you're using a straightedge and you've only got one hand put a bow in it bend it you can't probably can't see that it's got foam in it but the middle of that is raised up off the bench because it's bone like this so when pressure on the middle of it and I push it down with my finger or thumb or whatever it's tight on each end or if you don't do that your risk when you slide the plasma car down you risk it spinning around so it's a good little tip just for keeping it straight so I'm going to cut this machine set 50 so this will do this will cut 10 mil plate and I'm gonna cut 3 with it set a full blast [Music] that was super quick I can touch that straightaway look how clean the cut is there's no slag on it whatsoever whereas if I had turned that down there would be more slag on that and there would be much more heat in the pot okay I cut it now I turn that down I'll show you what I mean [Music] I'm not gonna try and touch that you can see how hot it is because it's actually bent the piece and you can see how much slag there is on the back of there and it's just a rougher cut much rougher cut much deeper lines still done the job and you will have noticed with that my travel speed was really slow and in the middle there it was actually almost still a little bit too quick I had to slow it down a bit and when you're cutting when you're cutting you'll know if you if you travel too fast the sound of the cut will change and you'll you'll sort of see it catch like where it hasn't cut all the way through you'll get a bit of a spark shoot up out of the top of the torch so if you've got your torch on there you'll see if some of those sparks will fly out the top of it instead of all coming out at the bottom that's how you know that you're traveling too quick so you can go as fast as you can until you hit that point and that's like the sweet spot this is what you don't really want but rather than hit out with a grinder the best way is just to knock it off and then and then you couldn't clean the last bit of the grinder so I mean you would imagine that you would you would just turn your plasma cutter down to the minimum to cut this which you could I'm not gonna do that oh I'll go 30 you could cut this at 50 but you would be going at such a rate you might slip and plasma cut your angle so a little bit of slag that comes off easy and it cuts through this rust as well that could travel a bit quicker than that you turn out to 40 now and then go with a bit quicker travel speed 30 amps on this side 40 amps on this side got much quicker travel speed much cleaner cut way less work time prepping that so yeah hopefully that shows you what I mean about that when you get to your really thick stuff obviously you're going to be on full blast anyway and then it's it's just a case of really finding that the maximum travel speed that you can use [Music] so that little bit there was just where I traveled a little bit too fast and then where you have an inconsistency in the sort of gouges of the metal that is an inconsistency in my travel speed and then different materials cut differently if you're trying to cut stainless steel stainless steels hard to cut with whatever you're cutting it with same deal and plasma cutter it's hard it's it's harder to get through than normal mild steel so you just need to slow your travel speed down a little bit aluminium is a little bit different again will cut piece of that now another thing I use for cutting out circles you've probably seen this if you watched a lot of my other videos so if you want to cut yourself a circle drill a hole in the middle of the plate and then the end of the torch just slots into these holes so you know pretty self-explanatory you can buy a kit and Scott like a little magnetic thing so it's got a magnet on it and you can just stick it on roll it around or you can just make yourself one of those for nothing I'll just show you what I mean about free handy so this is what I see people try and do and wonder why they're not getting very good result [Music] and this this is typically the type of edge you're gonna get if you try and just freehand it unless you've got some ridiculously steady hand it's very difficult to get straight cuts and sort of particularly curves or straight edges like that if you position yourself in a way so that your hands are supported you can do a better job of it [Music] so you can see by sort of support in your hands and like pivoting around your hands you can get a much better cut so I've like I'm supporting the torch with with two hands not trying to flow they're on I'm like and then when I cut that I'm like I'm pivoting the torch around a point like this this finger is resting on this finger here and I'm pivoting around like that rather than trying to like do it like ice just you know you've got a lot of options of the power you can do it just by moving your hands around alright so got some the alley tread plate I need to cut a piece to fit in the back of the recovery trap where there's a hole should be self-explanatory but if you're working with tread plate or checker play in your mark it out and cut in obviously you want to do it on the flat side not the place I see this I'm actually what the reason that it's ground out like that they say that I can use that when I'm plasma kind I can just mark it along and I know I'm cutting a right angle so that notch is just notched out so there so that it will clear the tip of that obviously these are cheap enough to wear if you slip and you know pairing a hole in it it's not really the end of the world so just a bit of a time-saving thing if you're doing a lot of cuts do you want to get a nice straight square edge what pull that and then I travel in the cab so a little bit moved a little bit too quick had a few little jerky moments and you you get you see all that out in your car it does tend to do this a little bit more I find but I think that's just because it doesn't slide across the other mininum as well as it does on the steel as it's more likely to hook up and grip a little bit I think but if you look at that first cut I did say it so I was a little bit slower on that and just a bit more consistent and now that's a really nice cut for a couple gnarly that's the only issue with them aluminium is the you do if you're welding along the cutting edge you do have to make sure you you clean it really well afterwards file all the sort of plasma gouge lines out of it or you try and weld it or it'll interfere with you well so I just buzz around these plasma cut edges with a grinder and a flat disk and then I can be riveted on the back of our recovery truck but yeah hopefully that helps a few people out if you've just bought a plasma cutter and you're not quite getting the results you would like to all the tools I've used in this video I put Amazon links in the description for there's some new merchandise listed just above the comments below and check that out and I should have some new designs up on there by the end of this week but yeah that's gonna be at first one just watching I'll see you next well [Music]

Channel: Urchfab

Views: 760,845

Rating: 4.7135696 out of 5

Keywords: plasma cutting for dummies, plasma cutting for beginners, how to use a plasma cutter, plasma cutting basics, cutting steel with a plasma cutter, plasma cutting, plasma cutter, plasma torch, plasma cutting tips and tricks, plasma cutting table, plasma cutting machine, plasma cutter how it works, plasma cutter for beginners, plasma cutter review, urchfab, fabrication for beginners, fabrication basics, how to fabricate, learn to fabricate

Id: _oBaXyIax_Q

Length: 23min 3sec (1383 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 21 2019