Building a plasma table, need advice.

[Robin Hewitt]

I would like to build a cnc plasma table but I don't have the time to sit in front of the computer for hours to research everything, so if you guys can help pointme in the right direction that would help save me allot of time :-)

I went through this. I went to cnczone and noticed that everyone made the same mistakes. Have they changed?
They weld up enormous constructs in steel, find the tool does not fly in the way they expected then try and fix it with THC.
The torch Z axis is invariably driven by an enormous stepper motor because stepper motors seem to come in packs of 3 and they cannot see any other way to do pierce and cut height. The THC then has to convert analogue to digital so everything becomes tortuously complicated controlling stepper coil current when all the cables are next to a plasma arc.
Apparently the only possible plasma unit is the Hypertherm because it has a very nice head for cutting thin stuff. Being Americans they cannot possibly buy a matching low power tool it has to cut 2" armour plate or nothing.
Mostly they will cut plates about 1 to 2 feet across but they make huge water tables and pump tons of polluted water because they can.
I nearly overcame all this, but at the last moment I discovered that the 5M pitch pulleys I had based it around had enormous backlash. I got disheartened after all that work,it got put on a back burner and is still waiting.
Anyway, there are a few snags you might want to think about, assuming you are still here