Hi,
I have never used a plasma cutter or any CNC machines before but I’ve seen a lot of videos of the crossfire and I like what I see.
I spend a lot of time drilling holes on square tubing or rectangle tubing with a drill press and my carbide hole saw and a lot of oil.
I have 8ft length tubing that needs to have holes every 1ft on each side in order to install (Hex Rod Coupling Nuts) but if I am off by just 1mm then the coupling is sideways.
So what I usually do is draw a template and use a flat bar to have identical holes on each side.
I would like to know if doing this type of work with the cnc crossfire is better/faster/possible?
Assuming your tubing will fit under the torch then yes it would be capable of cutting your holes out… but that would not be my preferred tool for the job you described. The setup to get your holes concentric would be labor intensive and cant imagine you would save much if any time. Even a benchtop mill with enough quill range to make it through your tubing in one shot would be sooo much faster and accurate than with a crossfire imho.
The pro will be my first tabe so I’m new to cnc plasma but I work as a cnc mill machinist and have a decent understanding of both processes. Maybe someone with more plasma experience will chime and have some insite than I do
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I think you could make a magnetic template easy enough and cut those holes with a plasma cutter in seconds. It looks like that tubing would be too high for the Crossfire but I think one axis could be modified to make it work but set up each time would be longer then laying a well made template on it and cutting it with a plasma torch.
Just my 2 cents.
I tried to use my Crossfire to cut 1" holes in 1/8" thick 2" wide flat strap evenly dimension across a 10 ft length and it was a huge head ache and waste of time. To cut clean, accurate holes like that, you need a vertical mill or at the very least a mill drill. You could get a Grizzly mill drill at a fraction of the price of a Crossfire + plasma + compressor + air dryer. The mill drill with an annual cutter would be so much more faster and extremely accurate compared to a CNC plasma table.
Another good option would be creating jig setups and then using a Mag Drill (with annular cutters) for fast and accurate cutting.
