hi all this is the make haven badging video for the plasma cutter
so a plasma cutter is a really cool tool it can cut anything conductive so that's pretty much any
metal the one that we have can do a severance cut up to three quarters of an inch that means it can
it can take the piece of metal and cut it into two parts it won't be pretty but it'll
get all the way through it can do a nice cut up to probably half an inch which is pretty impressive
probably the only time you'd want to use the plasma cutter over the water jet is if there's
a weird shape that couldn't fit in the water jet or you like the idea of sort of a more organic
natural shape that you're doing by hand versus the strict vector lines of the water jet but there are
certainly scenarios so and in comparison to an oxy acetylene cutter it will work on any metal so
the oxy acetylene only works on ferrous metals this will work on on anything conductive eat
similar to the other kinds of weld I mean this isn't welding you're not putting things together
you're separating them but similarly it creates a very very bright light so you need to make sure to
protect your body and your eyes and your hands so we'll get to that in a minute all right so we're
going to look at how the plasma cutter works it is pretty simple in terms of how you use it
it relies on a pretty cool physical phenomenon which is creating a plasma from the air so
normally the states of matter we think of are solids liquids and gases with each one having
more and more energy but you can actually turn gases into plasma by adding even more energy so
this creates an arc same electrical arc from stick welding or MiG or tig or any of the others and
and by doing that through air it turns the air into a plasma so after the torch
has made the plasma arc inside of it the arc conducts between the torch and the work piece
and then subsequently vaporizes the metal that it is sending electricity into and then compressed
air is blown through and that just sprays the molten metal out of the way so that's how it cuts
it's first by melting and then spraying it out of the way versus the oxyacetylene is actually
reacting oxygen with the air orbit the metal this is just using pure shop air so on the front we
only have a few controls this is the pressure of the air that we're putting into it and it has a
pretty narrow range here that says we should use from 20 to 50 and we'll probably just put it in
the middle in the manual which is right over here there are there's a table of values that you can
look at for reference and then the amperage and so that is how much current it's it's allowing to
be used to to melt the metal obviously more amperage and more air is for thicker things
less amperage and less air is for thinner things down here in terms of the plugs going into it
this is going to a ground clamp or a work clamp so same idea with the other kinds of arc welding
you need to form a circuit so this connects to your material there's a power cord plugs
in the wall and then this is your torch and then the only other thing is this has the compressed
air coming in the back so now we're going to look at the safety measures we need to take for
the plasma cutting one is we need to make sure to use the fume extractor to suck out all the nasty
fumes that it makes and two we need to protect ourselves so we'll go look at the safety gear
so we're gonna put on a jacket and the cap it's important that all of the clothing that you're
wearing is non-synthetic if it's polyester or latex or something like that it's just
gonna melt and then you'll have liquid metal next to your skin and molten plastic not great
so make sure to have closed shoes that are preferably made out of not synthetic so
just like a sneaker it's just going to melt and go right through so you don't want that
cotton pants and then the welding jacket I'm going to put on a cap to protect your ears and back your
neck because they're spraying metal and then we're going to put the mask on in terms of the settings
on the side of the mask we want to make sure it's set to in this case weld I'm not really sure what
cut does maybe that is fine setting too we're going to set all the way to the max which is 13
for the shade setting for delay we can leave that somewhere in the middle because this doesn't stay
very bright uh afterwards or you know maybe for a little bit um and then sensitivity we
can just that doesn't really matter because we're indoors and there's not a bright sun
that would be turning this on so that's all set we're just going to open it up on the back
and put it on your head and tighten it back down
all right and then we're going to look over here at the torch so
so this is the torch and it has a safety on it so it's not turned on right now so you need to push
the safety out of the way to get to the trigger and then this turns on both the electricity
and the air so the tip is consumable so this is a gas lens so this unscrews
so if this is stuck you can use the MiG pliers just to get a better grip on it and loosen it
and then this little these little pieces can be consumed over time if you use it responsibly that
shouldn't be too much of a problem if it gets a little gunked up you can just hit it with a
file to clean it off but right now I think they're pretty good shape so I'm just going to screw those
back on if they do get gunked up there should be some extra pieces here by plasma cutting
and if those run out then obviously just let a facilitator know or write on the clipboard
over by the wood shop that we should get some new ones so those are back on there
and in terms of safety you also want to make sure we have gloves on
so now we're just going to cut this piece of pretty thin sheet metal I'm going to say it's
you know maybe like a 16th of an inch uh so in terms of the settings on the machine um
we're gonna make sure that first the air is on so here we're just going to turn this valve that way
and so now it's on and this is sitting right in the middle so that's that's fine in terms of the
amperage we can turn that way down 20 amps is is good for about an eighth inch so we'll put it like
15 and see what that does for us if it's just blasting it to pieces we can turn it down if it
isn't cutting enough we can turn it up so we get a feel for that we want to have the ground clamp
or the work clamp on our piece it's important to put the work clamp on the piece that's going to
not fall off so you want to put this in this case we can just clamp it over here maybe
over here something important to note is that if we had a full plasma cutting table it would
be made up of slats so you could cut freely but here we don't we have this welding table so please
make sure not to cut the welding table when you're plasma cutting so be very mindful where the table
is have your piece not resting directly on the table thank you and so this is clamped on here
the part is clean enough if you know it doesn't need to be sparkling but if it's super rusty you
might want to make sure to brush it with a with a proper brush to clean off all the rust or grime or
paint or whatever so that you're working just on the metal make sure to remove any fire hazards so
paper and whatnot you don't want any oil on the table want to make sure the table is pretty dry
stuff like that make sure if you're cutting a big heavy piece of metal make sure you know
where it's going to fall so don't put your feet or anything important right under a heavy piece of
metal it's going to fall off in a second it can be valuable to put a line that you're going to follow
so for that you can either use a scribe which is just a just a sharp piece of metal
like hardened steel that you can use to scrape a line in to follow just like that or you can use a
soapstone so soapstone is just just for drawing on metal so we'll just draw that line a general
rule of thumb in terms of the current is 20 amps for an eighth of an inch and then add 10 amps for
every additional eighth of an inch of thickness of metal in terms of your hand positioning in general
you want to stay about a 16 16 of an inch above the material so just off and you can use your
hand a little bit to sort of provide that that distance you can also provide a put a rail on if
you want something to follow a straight line or to trace a shape you want to slight tilt
off vertical and then as you're going what you're aiming for is for the sparks to be
coming out slightly trailing so if they're just shooting straight down then you're going a little
too slowly or your settings are too high if they're shooting way backwards then you need to
increase your settings or slow down and you're aiming for it for a slight trail let's say you
want to do a plunger you want to start right in the middle instead of off the side of your part
you would start at 45 degrees and then work your way up to 90.
so that's just a little tip in general it's better to start off your material that's going to create
less splattering and clog up your tip a little bit less so something else is that when there's
actually a cone of plasma that comes out of this and when it comes out it spins counterclockwise
and so you the best cut is going to be on the right side with respect to
the your direction of travel because of that so in this case with it spinning counterclockwise uh
it's similar to like a router like why you only go one direction on a router when you're cutting with
it by hand you want to have so I would be keeping this part and this is so thin that it maybe isn't
relevant but if this was a quarter or a half inch thick it would be important to make sure
that the part I was keeping was on the right side because that would be the nicer side of the cut
and obviously as you're going the goal is probably to have a 90 degree bevel unless it isn't or I'm
sorry 90 degree angle edge and so you're just trying to manage your speed and your settings to
create to make sure that happens so we're gonna go ahead and do this so I'm gonna
turn the machine on so the switch is a little bit hard to get to but it
it goes sideways so the machine now needs to be plugged in so I'm gonna turn it off
all right so the machine is now plugged in just gonna flip the power switch on the back it goes
sideways so the machine should now be on and on the front there's a little screen saying
how many amps it's set to it says three for some reason this is not a super high quality machine
so I don't know which is right the dial or the readout um but I'm going to put it to 10
and see what happens even though it looks like it's 20 on the dial so the last piece of safety
equipment that we want to have set up is the fume extractor so we're going to bring this over here
so and I'm gonna turn the air pressure up a little bit
and now we're gonna cut
so that's using the plasma cutter obviously it takes some time to
calibrate it and get a feel for it for different materials
and different thicknesses and whatnot but that's that's the general idea
when you're ready to clean up you're just gonna put everything away make sure to put away the
scraps so I'm gonna turn this guy off okay and then we're just gonna put the clamp away
and turn the machine off make sure to turn the air off
unplug and wrap up the torch
so that is plasma cutting thanks for watching