Dross reduction

need some advice…I am cutting 16ga cold roll and the cuts are working so much better now. no seriously large pierce holes and no skips/lack of torch fire.

I’m still getting a lot of dross on the backside of the pieces. it’s not super crazy, but enough to hit with a flap disc.

is there something I can change in the settings to reduce the dross?

here are my settings;

16ga
.0591 kerf
.9 nozzle
35 amps
75psi
130 ipm
400ms pierce delay (not that this matters too much)

Thanks,

Gunny

My settings are similar except 1.0 nozzle and pierce delay is 200ms. dross comes off with a tap or a fingernail.

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We would need a picture of the edge of the part to help identify what’s going on.

Hope this pic works. image

What’s your air set up? I noticed a huge reduction in dross when I moved from my little 30gal Husky to a 2 stage 80 gal with refrigerated drier. I only see minimal dross on 16gauge where the machine slows down for turns or small, slow holes.

Here’s a rusty 16g piece I cut a bracket out of yesterday. This is the back of the waste side.

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that’s not too bad. mine is a lot more (the dross). I’m running a DeWalt 60 gallon air compressor with a 3-stage air drier plus the filter on the back of the Everlast. The compressor is wired directly to 220.

I just hand cut some 16 gauge and there was hardly any dross. I used the standoff tool attached to the hand torch.

so I’m not sure what is going on. What were your settings on the cut above?

Gunny

110ipm/ 32amp/ 55psi/ 200 ms pierce delay. held the sheet down with sticks and used the thin .0625 shim

Maybe I have too much air pressure.

I’ve had an issue similar to yours, I don’t have a definitive fix for mine yet but I will look at it again tomorrow. I wrote about it in another post. I got a warning about posting too much on one thread from the forum earlier so I won’t be back here.

Posting too much??? From a moderator or as an auto message? That’s ridiculous.

It’s a Discourse (the forum software) warning. It doesn’t stop you but the idea is that forums are groups of people sharing not one just one person monopolizing the “conversation”.

The warning can be ignored.

Makes sense now. But I really don’t like the 20 character minimum.

That’s part of Discourse wanting to encourage use as discussion & not foster a bunch of “me too” or “I agree” or “looks good” comments.

Pretty common with other Discourse hosted forums I am on.

What plasma cutter are you using?

Kick the amps down to 30, and air to 70

I’m using the Everlast 60s. And thanks Dicky. I’ll give that a try.

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