Building a plasma table, need advice.

[Web Goblin]

We have a few big plasma profiling machines on our site, and I used to work for one of the big companies, and I have never seen one yet with ballscrews on anything but the Z axis. All of the machines so far have railtrack and R&P for X axis, linear rail for Y axis and linear rail and ballscrew for Z.
Saying that we are just about to start work installing a 6KW laser with linear rail for all axis. Apparently this rather large lump of metal can hit 140 meters per minute on fast travel. For something that can profile 13mt x 3mt plates this will be interesting to see.

[superclarkey]

Thanks the info is great :-)

i want a working size of 8'x4' and the gantry needs the room to be about to jog out of the way so overhead crane can lift the plate in.

will be cutting upto 12mm plate max.

i have bought a hypertherm 45 for the cutting and will upgrade if it's not man enough.

[Boyan Silyavski]

I agree, most real commercial plasmas use helical RP. I will not insist further on ball screws,though they could be protected or dust evacuated in a downdraft table like i said. Obviously the less hassle, the better.

I don't know prices, but if he likes as he said "ready elements" he could look at Bell Everman "servo belt". Or try to construct similar belt on belt mechanism. I assume that 2 belts protect each other from dust in between, upside down and hidden.