Hi from Bradford

Hi, my name Paul. I have been looking at CNC plasma cutters for a while but have a very tight budget do to only having a small amount of regular work for it.

I am looking at building a machine that can plama cut (or mill) retangles into 2mm-40mm x 40mm and 2mm-40mm x 80mm box section @ 4000mm long and then drill / tap holes down the centre line. I have been unable to find anything on the market that can do this within a sensible budget and that's not older than me.

30 years ago I used to service / programme pick and place machines, so I have a good knowledge base to build on, out dated but solid.

I'm am literally at the start of the project, so looking for ideas from software to servo drives.

Many thanks.

Hi Paul, That shouldn't be too difficult to build but does depend on exactly how tight the budget is.?

Plasma and Drilling/tapping by there very nature don't lend them selfs to budget machines. If you want reliability and hassle-free plasma cutting then you'll need to buy a decent Plasma unit like a Hypertherm. The cheaper chinese units will easily do the job of cutting 2mm box but they are not all just plug n play and will require more effort to get working reliably.

From the sounds of it, you'd be better with a rotary unit that you can cut/mill all 4 sides. The Plasma side is easy enough as it's just mostly the plasma unit and possible torch height control but the Drill/tapping will require the correct spindle type with high torque at low RPM with either a tapping head or an encoder on the spindle to allow it to do ridged tapping. The controller will also need to have the ability to read the encoder and do ridged tapping. This will push the budget up as slow-spinning motors with encoders are not so common or cheap and neither is a tapping head.
There are several options on controllers ranging from Free to very expensive and all with different levels of complexity and learning curves.

Bespoke hybrid machines like what your planning are not really something that fit with "Very tight budgets".!!

Thank you for your quick reply.

After spending the entire day researching controllers etc I have decided that I am just going to do the plasma cutting with the first build. The drilling and tapping will be looked into later.

I will no doubt be asking lots of questions but I will do this under the appropriate headings, once I have searched what is already out there.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by RedEng

After spending the entire day researching controllers etc I have decided that I am just going to do the plasma cutting with the first build. The drilling and tapping will be looked into later.

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Wise choice dual-purpose machines rarely do anything very well. Plasma and milling don't mix very well so It's a good call IMO.