I’ve been cutting a lot of the same design, sometimes the machine will cut 2 or 3 in a row flawlessly then randomly the torch will go to the next cut and fire for probably less than .5 seconds and extinguish. And I get the torch moving before cutting voltage sensed. Then I’ll retry cut and it’ll work flawlessly again for a few more cuts. Sometimes it works great and sometimes it can be worse. I’ve messed around with pierce height and delay a lot, and have switched electrodes several times too. 14ga HR, Pierce height .125 pierce delay .5-1.0
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Air pressure must be at least 70 psi on the plasma cutter control panel for the entire cut. Are you sure your compressor can keep up with the cut program? Next, are you using good-quality consumables? Not Amazon or Plasmadyn? Also check the work clamp connection at the plasma cutter for a loose connection. Its has happened. And that you’re connecting the clamp to the metal your cutting. Its been done also.
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Yes I use quality consumables, I’ve only ever used products straight from Everlast. I read a lot about avoiding cheaper consumables. And I have checked my ground clamp several times. The only thing that you mentioned that I might need to check is the air pressure. I’m certain my compressor can keep up, but I typically set it to 60-65 and it stays there throughout the cuts. Maybe it’s too low? The cut quality is always great I might add. It just randomly doesn’t always pierce
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As an Everlast user for the last 4 years, it is either air pressure or the air solenoid. The spring in the air solenoid that Everlast uses gets weak and leads to intermittent failure to fire. It won’t happen on the initial pierce, but when it has to quickly close and open again to re-fire during post flow.
You can take the solenoid apart and stretch the spring to get it working correctly again. I would try bumping the air pressure up before going to the trouble of disassembling the machine.
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Alright I’ll try that today and post about it. I’ll try bumping air pressure to 70 first. The machine is about 2 months old
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I would guess your problem is air related.
Stretching the spring in the air solenoid has nothing to do with misfires. The spring in the solenoid holds the plunger down till the solenoid coil activates and creates a magnetic field to pull the plunger off the seat to let air pass. If the spring is weak it will let air bypass through the solenoid when not activated. Taking the solenoid apart most of the time cleans out any contaminates that may have gotten in causing the solenoid to stick.
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Set it for 76 psi and see what it drops to on the control panel while cutting. 70 while cutting is good.
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So you don’t think it would be worth it to take the solenoid apart or messing with the spring?
That would be the last thing I would do to clean the plunger area out. Everlast has had some problems with their air solenoids in the past.
I did check the electrode plunger yesterday when I changed electrodes and it still looks and moves freely like new. Just figured I’d throw that info in here
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He is referring to a plunger located inside the air solenoid of the machine. If you set your machine to 75 psi, and during the torch operation, it drops more than 3 or 4 psi. you might have a solenoid issue. Sometimes it just sticks during torch firing between cut locations.
So I tried to set my air pressure to 70 and that didn’t work fix the problem either. I set it on 70 at the machine and during the cut it would stay at 70 as well so there’s no issue there. Then I tried to adjust the spring in the solenoid too and that also didn’t work. I took it apart, cleaned it, stretched the spring an 1/8 inch and put it all back together and still having the issue. The torch will pierce and cut several times in a row then all the sudden it will misfire “torch moving before cutting voltage sensed”. At this point I’m not sure what to do
Edit: I did also notice that my cut height & pierce height seem to be much higher realistically than its set to be in fire control. In fire control pierce height is .125 and cut height is .62 but by just looking at the torch I can tell it’s realistically probably double that with both heights. Nothing excessive but definitely higher. Does anyone know if that could cause an issue?
If cut height is way to high it can cause a few different problems. Have you stopped or paused the program and measured the cut height to see what it really is?
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