Tool Tips! Smooth clean lines with the plasma cutter.

hi makers how's it going today I'm Rachel and I am the idea founder a metal shop instructor today we're going to go how to get smooth clean cuts with the handheld plasma torch first I'm going to cover helmets and safety gear so you need an auto darkening helmet in order to protect your eyes from the UV light that's coming out of the machine you're also going to need gloves because as you're cutting the material is getting hot we're also going to go over every time you use this tool especially at idea foundry with it being a community workshop you don't know how much it's been used before you've come in so over here I have an example of a brand new electrode and then a really wasted one so we can't use this one it won't give you very good cuts and most of the time the electrodes come with a new copper tip as well so I go ahead and replace that so you get better air flow also on this plasma cutter in particular we have another one the Miller we have which doesn't have a safety but the Hobart does you want to slide down your safety button just to get it started it won't engage otherwise so see it the trigger button stops you just slide one down to get it started when you're holding your torch you want to make sure that it is perpendicular to your work surface here ninety degrees will give you if you're holding your torch at 90 degrees you want to you'll get a better cut much cleaner cut to stabilize you can kind of brace your arms against your hip you can also and I'll go ahead and put my gloves on so you get a better visual you also can I would suggest holding it with two hands so I'm a right all-righty I like to hold the the button part with my right hand and then my non-dominant hand I rest underneath to kind of help control depth a little bit better so also to find your test cut or your settings I like to do test cuts which I've done a few over here this is eighth inch thick material which is also 11 gauge so I've already set the amperage for that all machines are a little bit different so it's best to just do a test cut beforehand when you are cutting you want to hover about a sixteenth of an inch or less above that workpiece you don't want to drag it because as the material is melting it's creating slag it's also I'm going to keep you from making smooth cuts as it's bubbling up so always hover and the slag is a mix of metal oxides and silicon dioxide I'll kind of go over how to get rid of that while it's still hot it's best to get it get rid of it with a chip hammer and I usually rest it against the table here and kind of use that to pinch the slag off it helps lessen your work afterwards to get that off it's not great to weld on either so you want to get rid of it alright so now we're going to go into showing you a test cut so I'm going again to hover about sixteenth of an inch away from that material so let's get started it's bacons so that's it for the how to get smooth clean cuts next we're gonna go into best pace and how to not go too fast while you're cutting so you know that you're cutting through I'm Rachel thanks for joining me today bye

Channel: Idea Foundry

Views: 7,836

Rating: 4.757576 out of 5

Keywords: welding, plasmatorch, plasmacutting, howtoweld, howtoplasmacut, plasmatorchbasics, weldingbasics, weldingtips, weldingclass

Id: YBpPtTMXZ0A

Length: 4min 27sec (267 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 27 2019