New Member: Man of steel

[Man of steel]

I am just beginning with an ArcLight Max Elite 5x5 cnc plasma table with laser guidance, an engraver, and water table. I am going to use Flashcut CNC, but am just now trying to understand the new programming. It is difficult for me right now because I have never used a plasma table before and am trying to set it all up myself. I installed all the necessary electrical in my garage to run the table, have a 10hp EMAX air compressor that kicks bunzee for CFM and is reasonably silent/lower decibels, have ordered an EMAX 58cfm air dryer, am using a good filtration system for the air, and am using a Hypertherm 65 for the plasma table. While setting the table up and making sure everything worked, all of a sudden the plasma fired up into the water! It surprised me, I must have set things up right for it to function. Now I am waiting a few weeks to install the EMAX air dryer and try to burn some 12 gauge mild steel. I also have a Clausing CNC knee mill that I will be learning to use with Fagor programing, a heavy duty Chicago hydraulic box and pan brake that bends 12 gauge metal up to 8ft long, a Miller 215 Multimatic Welder that I need to learn to use, a 5ft Blast cabinet for cleaning parts, and a Fugi HVLP paint machine for spray painting and finish work. I desire to invent things and make classic car parts. The first invention I will work on is a special parts cleaner to help me clean all my old classic car parts to sell. I am a walking encyclopedia of old cars and their parts that are getting very hard to find. I am setting up a metal fabricating garage as a hobby to have fun and make extra money in my old age.

[plasmanewbie]

Welcome to the site Man of Steel. Sounds like you have your shop well set up with all the equipment you need. While your waiting for your air dryer it may be a good idea to draw up some things you want to cut and perform some dry runs to familiarize yourself with machine operation before you start cutting things. Questions will arise during this process and you can use the search box above or if you can't find your answer you can just ask. Wishing you great success.

[adbuch]

Welcome aboard Man of steel! It sounds like you are setting up quite a nice little shop for yourself there. What sorts of old car parts to you clean and sell? I like old cars, and have few of my own. I don't know if you got one with your table setup, but Arclight Dynamics make a really cool auto tracer attachment for automatically tracing out cardboard templates, etc. and converting them to ready to cut dxf files. I have something similar and adapted it to one of my cnc router tables. Here is a short video showing how they work.

Be sure to post some photos of your shop setup and some of your other tools and projects for us to enjoy.

Thanks,
David