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Titivating A CNC Plasma Table

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awemawson:
In early October I bought a CNC Plasma Table - motivated by needing a few bits cut for that Flail Mower, and always having hankered after one it seemed a good excuse  :clap:

It is a home made one with a capacity of approximately 1500 x 1500 (mm) - uses HiWin rails, stepper motors driving rack & pinions and came with a Hypertherm 45 Plasma cutter complete with a machine torch. Also it has an automatic torch height control which is a big advantage.

Although I'm glad to say it worked as bought it was obvious to me that it was going to have to be re-built as the wiring and arrangement of the control box was not at all to my liking.

Now when I got it, it got pushed into a corner of the welding shop where I used it successfully to make the bits I needed, but it became obvious that with it there no improvements were going to happen, as it wasn't very accessible, and it's rather chilly in there at the moment.

So today was the big day to move it - clearing all the odds and sods out of the way in the welding shop and fork lifting it into my operating theatre project space  :ddb:

So a few pictures for a start:

awemawson:
When a CNC Plasma table is going full tilt it blows burning metal particles downwards creating much mess, fumes and nastyness, so one of the first things I intend to incorporate is a powerful down draught extract system.

Basically an upside down hood under the bars of the table acting as a funnel to collect all the debris and fumes which are removed by a fairly beefy extractor fan - probably 12" diameter in this case though not fixed yet.

Googling about in various forums I came across a neat layout, and contacting the builder he was happy for me to do a direct crib of his idea - why re-invent the wheel - so these pictures are of his table and extract duct

I'll probably get a local duct work firm to bend it up, as although I've got the bender and guillotine they can probably do it for not much more than the materials would cost me to buy

awemawson:
Immediately under the support bars I'll fix a mesh to catch the larger 'drops' from cut outs, and the collecting box will have a spark arresting fine mesh on it's output.

So the way it looks at the moment the job list is:

a/ get an extract duct bent up

b/ source a suitable sealed steel enclosure for the drive electronics that can be fixed to the side of t he machine

c/ decide whether to put a PC inside same enclosure (ventilation issues)

d/ incorporate limit switches

e/ totally re-vamp all the wiring to hopefully a rather better standard than currently.

AdeV:

--- Quote from: awemawson on November 14, 2016, 10:02:25 AM ---
c/ decide whether to put a PC inside same enclosure (ventilation issues)


--- End quote ---

You can get some pretty decent fanless PCs these days. If you're not wedded to Windows, you could probably get away with using a Raspberry Pi 3 [and allegedly Windows 10 will run on one, but IMHO that's just cruelty to silicon].

nrml:
Or one of the increasingly popular DDCSV 1.1 or similar boxes? It would be perfect for this sort of environment.

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