buying older plasmaCam

[brewcrew]

Found a older plasmaCam on craigslist, its the DHC model and was told it only has 40 hours on it. Anything i should look out for? Whats a reasonable price to pay for it? This will be my first table, and will be using it for metal art, and shop projects. thanks for any advise!!

[rdj357]

The DHC was replaced by the DHC2 about 10 years ago or so. The DHC has a couple things that hurt its value. First, the old round Z motor is not nearly as good as the newer square body type of the DHC2 and there is also about half inch less Z travel. Considering there isn't much to start with, those are serious function drawbacks.

The DHC2 came with an older version of software that has since been upgraded. Assuming the license for that machine has not been upgraded to Design Edge, you would not get any technical support with that machine directly from Plasmacam. Also, if there were any problems with the controller that required repair, the options would be limited with the best option being a $2000 software upgrade and a $700 controller repair.

Now the brass tacks of the thing.... because of all the above, I'd not pay more than a few thousand dollars for a DHC in great shape. Once transferred to your name (if you buy it you'd need to complete the transfer form to take possession of the software license for it) the best option would be to immediately upgrade it from a DHC to a DHC+ which is really the same thing as if you bought a new DHC2. That upgrade for new carriage, controller, and software is $7k (which would include the advanced levels of software) so if you could get the table for a couple thousand you could have essentially a new machine and save several thousand compared to buying it all new at around 12k.

[MGMcCoy]

I have one of the older DHC2 running the original PlasmaCam 3.11 upgrades of software. About 4 years after we bought, they changed to DesignEdge because the original software was so awful you were lucky to get a design to completion before you tore all your hair out. But, spending another 2K seemed like extortion, so I suffered along. Now, 10 years later, I am having com issues, changed computer, changed Parallel card, changed Cable, checked and rechecked the BIOS and driver settings. Nothing worked until it did, got a flawless run, best cut ever. Turned things off, next time same com issues, same troubleshooting, no go. Thinking my DHC2 controller has gone bad. Called PlasmaCam to see if the could check, repair, or replace the controller. They said that I needed to upgrade to Design Edge before they could even replace the DHC2 controller because the newer controllers won't or don't support the original PlasmaCam software. I don't trust PCam support enough to want to take a chance on them. They will probably upgrade again and leave me behind again. There is a risk that the upgrade won't fix the problem anyway. I'll probably try another Parallel card as the cheapest low probability fix, but PlasmaCam has disappointed me time and again for their support after the sale. Upgrades should be cheap for existing customers since the revenue from our purchase funded the development of DesignEdge in the first place. Just my 2¢ worth...if you are looking to buy a new plasma table, I think I would consider a different one. Preferably one that does not rely on obsolete parallel card technology. Preferably one that keeps their customers upgraded. PlasmaCam was not the dream I thought it would be.

[rdj357]

Sorry you had that experience. I love my tables and the software that operates them. So much so that, because they don't offer training, I started a business doing just that. There are people who refuse to upgrade from 3.11 to Design Edge all over the country, not because they can't come up with $2k but because it does everything they want it to and just don't want to so I'm not sure 'original software was so awful' is very accurate.

I hope you get whatever issue you are having handled but I can tell you from experience with both and the testimonies of scores of other owners I've talked to or had in class, the upgrade is well worth the cost. I have no idea what the future holds but for me, if I had it to do over again, I'd purchase the PlasmaCam(s) again.