10 x 5 foot plasma table build

Hi all,

deep breath.... So I'm building a plasma table. I know that this is going to take me a while, I have a full time job and like drinking at the weekend, so whats left is two hours a night every weeknight.


I used to work as a professional welder, many years ago now, and maintain that as a hobby.

I work in IT so have some clue about the the computer aspect, though I have not used CAD type programs.

I mess around with electrics quite a lot, though cannot navigate a circuit board.

I can learn, and am pretty determined when faced with problems. Especially problems I'm interested in.

I make sculpture. I'm not intending to go into engineering, cutting parts for customers. Rather I want to make large scale sculpture, like the stuff you see along motorways or on roundabouts. That's why I'm going for a 10x5 table, I intend building huge stuff. Jeez im really looking forward to it.

But I have to get myself there. So let the problems begin!

No. 1 problem I was faced with is, that I had no way to make reliable, repeatable, perfectly square cuts.

So I looked around, and eventually bought a Femi ABS NG160, which i received last week. This -should- give me very accurate cuts.
It cut square right out of the box which is a good start.

http://i.imgur.com/H75HPPR.jpg

I need to feed this with a roller table, so I'm building a 14 foot roller table now, with rollers I salvaged from an old set of gravity rollers.
The frames were out of whack but there are 37 good usable rollers, so will be fine for a 14 foot roller table. I bought steel yesterday for the roller table.

http://i.imgur.com/6bfoUNC.jpg

thanks for reading,
ned.

Oh

for got to mention, the reason I started this thread now is, I have to make the roller table square also. I dont know how to do that. Ever since the inception of this idea ive been mulling over it. I can get my dad to do it, he lives 100 miles away so its an ask, and I'd rather learn to do it myself.

Has anyone any tips or advice? the table will look like this below. Ill make a 14 foot table and then cut out the section where the saw sits (the box on top represents the saw)

http://i.imgur.com/yE64Zp9.jpg

So I'm left with the puzzle, how to make the two side bars perfectly parallel.

http://i.imgur.com/RlbW9Ih.jpg


The floor of my shed isnt even, nor is anything else I can think of, perfectly flat.

Someone on mig-welding.co.uk suggested i bolt it first and then adjust, which seems like it might work

Whoa! You are starting by making a ramp? I can see you are going to fit right in here :hysterical: :hysterical: :hysterical:

more than that. I have to prepare to build the slide, hundreds of holes, so i dragged my bench pillar drill forwards to the front of the shed into the light, and am adding 2.5 feet to it, to make it floorstanding. All the elements have to be in place before i can start, in this case thats taking a while.

it's upping my machinery game though. I want a press brake!

the shed was a mess had to claw back space, ready to start new project.

http://i.imgur.com/INlVEri.jpg

a 10x5 table should just about fit in there. My landlord is knocking our house and building a new one, bigger. I told him about the machine and he said he might extend the shed while hes at it. I said to him, you dont have to do that, he said, I have the steel, I said, haha, go ahead so!

I have come up with a solution.

weld eggcup onto bottom of steel beam 1.

weld ball onto bottle jack.

fill eggcup with grease.

do this on 4 corners.


This is presuming that:

A.
The top surface of steel beam 1,
and the bottom surface of steel beam 2 are within a reasonable tolerance.


B.
The beams are straight. The shorter beams of the rectangle will have to be a very straight.

The weight of steel beam 2 will keep them orientated.
Now measure with spirit levels and adjust with bottle jacks. Repeat until correct.


http://i.imgur.com/W1prJR3.jpg

When happy weld steel beam 3 into place.

Remove steel beam 1 as it was only ever a support.

http://i.imgur.com/PpQ59G1.jpg

Ned. Just thinking do you really need a roller table as it will take a lot of room how about something more simple along the lines of http://www.toolstation.com/shop/p431...Cnup-1x8wBEiQA

Especially if you are just using it to build the CNC

Hiya Clive,

yah thats a notion allright! seems much easier. However I've wanted this setup for a while now so am happy to proceed. I'll use it for a lot more than just the plasma table, and building it square a good trial run before the plasma table.

The pic of the shed above, im getting rid of all the shelving on the left side of the pic. I'm putting the roller table on castors so it will slide in along the side when not in use, for longer lengths of steel I'll put it out.

okay hello again everyone.

I totally cheated and bouhgt a fully functioning 8x4 router table. However! The table itself isnt suitable, so I'm building an entitely new table, so this is still a build log.

Table can bee seen here. It ran like crap when i got it but replaced some of the bearings and now its pretty smooth

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWW7bVzlkNE


Warwick I'm going one bigger than 80mm and building it from 100x100x6.5 box iron, this fugger will not flex.
Also it doesn't have to be elaborate, since this metal is just hugely strong. I intend this to be the shape, just very very very simple

http://i.imgur.com/sQ2PhZC.jpg

So I'm going to transplant the Y axis rails, the Y axis ballscrew and then the gantry onto the new table.

http://i.imgur.com/PbDkwa6.jpg

My current notion to chew over is the Z axis. I'm going to cut the router mount off the carriage and bolt on a plate. Then I have to think about what lifter to use.



If anyone has suggestions for a lifter and THC they like im all ears. Going to be using a machine torch and hypertherm powermax 45.