Hypertherm Leaking air

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DieselMonkey
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Hypertherm Leaking air

Post by DieselMonkey »

My Powermax 85 is 1 year and two weeks old. I have replaced the filter bowl assembly once and just got my second from hypertherm on friday. This time I started looking and comparing before tearing into my machine. I noticed something quite interesting. Maybe Jim Colt can help me with this.
hypertherm filter bowl.jpg
hypertherm filter bowl.jpg (48.63 KiB) Viewed 1063 times
The one on the left is the old one. The one on the right the new. After about six months or so, what I am supposing is glue, breaks around the bottom of the shield surrounding the filter bowl, allowing the shield to stay locked in while the bowl drops down a good 3/16 of an inch. Thus allowing the seal to leak air.

This time instead of replacing the whole assembly I just replace the bowl. TADA!!! No leak....

(My machine is regulated at 100 psi)
Few problems in life can't be solved with the generous application of a cutting torch and a taco truck.... or something like that.....
jimcolt
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Re: Hypertherm Leaking air

Post by jimcolt »

I will forward this post to Hypertherm's tech service department.....I personally have never heard of this occuring, however tech service gets 99% of the calls.....so if this is a repeat problem they would know. repeat issues are carefully tracked to determine various field failure modes.


Jim Colt
Ramball36
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Re: Hypertherm Leaking air

Post by Ramball36 »

Dug this up in a search, mine did the exact same thing. I have a new bowl assembly on the way. I shoved the ring off of a 20 oz coke bottle in there to get my by in the meantime!
DieselMonkey
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Re: Hypertherm Leaking air

Post by DieselMonkey »

Dang! What an old skeleton of a post! I'll update anyway. I am now on my third bowl assembly and I keep the others as spares. The fix for the original leak is to take the bowl off and clean/lube the o-ring with DW-20 (Knock-Off WD-40) and it will work like a champ. Another issue that occurred was the actual bowl itself cracking. Easy fix for that as well, remove the brass fitting from the bottom, remove the outer plastic shield device and clean the bowl, then seal the crack from the inside with gel type super glue. The filter bowl has literally been the only point of issue on my PowerMax 85 which is now going on its 7th year of daily cutting.
Few problems in life can't be solved with the generous application of a cutting torch and a taco truck.... or something like that.....
Richard B
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Re: Hypertherm Leaking air

Post by Richard B »

I have 3 Pmax45 cutters and 1 65. The 65 is 5 days short of one year in production. The regulator bowls all failed on the 45s under warranty and again after warranty. I solved that problem by installing aftermarket regulators on the 45s. The 65 however is still under warranty and my table is down. The folks at Hypertherm tell me that this is not a common problem.

My setup feeds 80 PSI clean air to the unit. We built this when the first Powermax 45 blew. The regulator states max 150 PSI, We were feeding 120 PSI so we kept cutting is down until we started having occasional low pressure faults then cranked it back up until we were operating without errors. So now, we know that we are feeding it pretty much the minimum pressure which is well below the Max rating on the bowls. We went through 7 bowls on the 2 45s over 2 years, the other is a manual machine and has been leaking a little for the last 3 years. We just use it occasionally and I have a spare bowl for that one. 2 years ago I discovered a cheap regulator that had a glass bowl that fit the Pmax 45 regulator so I bought 3 of them. Never had a problem since.

The Pmax 65 is a very different bowl so I won't be that lucky. My plasma table is currently down for 1/2" cutting and I have two guys waiting on parts. That is over $1,500 a day in lost productivity. It's been about 4 hours since the bowl split and my supplier has not yet been able to locate one so I can get back up and running. My son just came up and told me that the 65 whip will work on the older 45s and he wired the new controller the same as the old one so Looks like I will be back up and running with a 45 albeit much slower.

I am not impressed with this recurring issue. The machine is great but the fact that Hypertherm is not owning up to it, documenting this problem and setting up their dealers with quick access if not stock is disheartening to say the least. Just getting some bowls out there so we can buy spares woudl be great. A decent price would be nice too.

R
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