Building a plasma table, need advice.

[Lee Roberts]

Hi welcome to the forum!

Short and sweet:

A machine designed to run a plasma torch doesn't need to be anything overly sophisticated or substantial in design, providing you build the machine mechanically sound i.e all axis's run smooth, free of binding and square to each other, a simple design using somewhat "light weight" materials can be used to build a nice machine, this lends well to not needing such things as big powerful motor's.

Have a look in the build log section Plasma Table Machines, here you can see what others have built in the build log section, I'd say more importantly would be to read through some of the other non build log discussions as running a plasma can be troublesome in other ways (electrical noise etc.)

As time is against you, it maybe a better option to look at a commercial machine such as the Blue Marlin from Techserv, "I would like to build a machine" and "but I dont have the time" dont really go well together when it come's to any type of CNC machine unfortunately, so if you really do want to build your own, the minimum investment is going to require a reasonable amount of time just on the discovery of the components you'll be working with.

Spending the time you do have in a commercial machine and so the company, would come with the benefit of (I would hope) support at the end of the phone if and when you need it, as although you'll get all the help and support you need from others on the forum, a request for help here isn't guaranteed or a response time.

.Me

[superclarkey]

I didn't say I didn't have the time to build it, but didn't want to start from scratch researching every single aspect l if people can offer help in the right direction.

I know in mechanically terms what is required and I don't know where the best place is to get the parts so was again hoping for advice.

there has to be common parts people use or software people thing is the best etc.

i wanted experienced advice, reading people's blogs where they are learning them selfs also doesn't mean it's the best way of going about things etc, how do I know who is doing it right or wrong? I don't know enough to make an educated desision right now, so means I have to learn everything so that I can form that opinion.

i was pointed to this forum and maybe I expected that I would be offered some advice, but being told to basically go do a "search" or "buy one new" wasn't what I needed to hear lol (kinda obvious :-p )

thanks anyways, i won't give up on this just looks like I'll have to do it the hard way which I was trying to avoid :-)