New to plasma cutters

[jason0012]

I operate a blacksmith and ornamental iron shop. I came across this ESAB (powercut 875) really cheap a while back but have not yet really even gotten to look at it. My past year has been occupied with moving from my old dilapidated 400 sq ft shop to a 5000 sq ft comercial shop. I now have 3 phase, air out the tin yang with a dryer, and more floor space than I know what to do with. I would like to get a CNC table, though it has been on the back burner for a while. The esab may or may not even work. I dont know much about them and have to admit, I am a tad baffled by the widely varying prices. To be fair I am not really knowledgeable enough to know why one 4x4 table is $28,000, while another is priced at $1400. My intended use- at least for now, is to cut leaves for my work. I have oxy fuel cut them freehand from 14 ga for many years, and the clean up is hell. I have lately been trying to forge them from round but am not getting the results I want without the same level of clean up. I dont want cookie cutter consistency that would come from die cutting, but could run 5 or 6 different CNC parts and get acceptable variations.

[acourtjester]

Welcome aboard great place to get questions answered about CNC plasma. The last sentence begs the question have you look locally for someone to cut the 5 or 6 parts you want. If you state your location there maybe someone here could help you out, and maybe help you get a better grip on CNC plasma operation.

[jason0012]

I need 5 to six different patterns to not have a finished piece that looks machine made- I use hundreds of leaves

[acourtjester]

I understood that and that also is why a CNC plasma will help. You can cut as many as you want once you have your patterns.
Patterns can be made from line drawings or images then traced to form DXF files to be cut. If you took overhead pictures of the leaves you like on a plain background (mono-color) to get a good contrast. This is just a suggestion to see if the results would be what you are looking for.

[jason0012]

I have been picking through posts here, and sales posts on google. Some of these low priced systems seem kind of shady, but so do some of the bigger ones. I have to admit, I am a bit put off by the "contact a sales rep" pricing. Is there a huge drawback to a water table? A downdraft system seems a tad more involved than I want to get into, but doable if it poses a BIG advantage. I am sure there are features i need to look for, but dont really even know what questions to ask. Oxy fuel capabilities would be cool, but I am not sure I would even use it. The leaves are an example of the sort of parts I need, but i do machinery fabricating as well and capacity to 1 inch would be awsome. The ESAB is up to that, though my most likely usage will be thin stuff in a 10-16 gage range.