with the 45 you will have to cut the speed down. when i first got the 65 i ran some 1/4 parts at 45-amp didnt want to hit the duty cycle. i had really good cuts at 50 ipm book settings is 48 not sure what the voltage is… most Hypertherm’s i have seen do great at book settings sometimes i have to tweak them a little.
well on charging these parts are for the company i work for i do work from home on the side these are parts i use to build steps for heavy equipment. at my going rate i would charge around 1.20 each plus material that price was determined on cutting on 45 amp specs… the owner decided to pay what we were outsourcing them for minus the material. stuff like this is real money makers. every 23 seconds there is about a buck 60 going into my bank account. As a whole when i price parts out i charge $100 a hour for machine time then double my cost on material blasting and paint always extra. with that said if a customer comes to me wanting 1000 or 2000 parts like this there is always a discount for quantity.
long story short a 4 by 8 sheet will take me about 2 hours and 45ish to cut up and i make about 800 bucks on it. it is hard to make that kind of money making yard art and signage around here anyway.
a insurance is recommended for sure. friend some welding shops in your area and throw them a pitch. there is less cad time and more machine watching making brackets and such in bulk.
as far as designing i did the cad work but that was copied from oem parts.
Hi Phillip,
Great pic of benefits of THC. It’s saved me a lot of grief. Some one mentioned three inches of scrap along an edge leftover. Have you ever tried using that leftover space to precut verticle expansion joints in between columns of parts? I can’t imagine that eleven joints would be required but four might, if parts cutting sequence started in the middle on the pattern and cut towards each end. I ask because I don’t think my torch would clear that much of warp height. (I know it doesn’t warp all at once.) But it does a great job when cutting from “domed” shaped stock, like farm implement discs. You gotta just love the Pro cnc with THC!
Actually that 3 inch scrap I cut another row out of to get as much as possible out of a sheet. I don’t cam it in the nest because some of these sheets are a little tough to get square because they are not sheared straight .The warp only raises up on the first two rows generally it does raise up slowly. The torch is most time past it. You know if metal warps that much it has to pull the whole sheet some.
I almost didn’t buy the THC I am glad I did.
There is a few people say with thicker plate THC isn’t necessary and I agree in most cases if you are not doing large nests . I made this post to show where it is needed.
I do love and enjoy my machine. There is some that have issues. 2 years no issues other than the operator. A great money maker with the right connections. Help pay for my tool fetish .
Thanks for the info. I am right along those lines as well but I am struggling with the cad part of it. I am the guy that says ah don’t worry about that or how’s $20 sound:)
This might be a dumb question but there is nothing in cut control software that actually regulates the voltage does it? I assumed the setting on the actual Hypertherm is what regulated that number? So I have mine set to just under the max.
For a set amperage, voltage will vary based on how far off the material your torch is. If you have THC then Firecontrol will move the Z-axis up and down to try to keep the voltage in a set range based on either the Smart Voltage as determined by the IHS, or the nominal voltage that you manually set in Firecontrol.
That said, Firecontrol doesn’t directly control anything on your plasma cutter other than torch on/off.
What issues with cad are you having? What car program are you using?
In the middle left side is your THC are you click settings to change from smart voltage. In fire control you enter a voltage and THC raises and lower according.
Thats impressive!!
No cad issues just how to price cad work when I do it. I was thinking $150hr for cad time. I have talked with a few people that struggle to find people that can draw. I am not the best by any means, but I can build a halfway decent turd:) I use Spaceclaim and now trying to learn Fusion but struggling. I also purchased the MR1 and needed the CAM. MasterCAM for Spaceclaim is for the guy that has no money limits:)
As far as charging for cad work I don’t know how to help you. I have heard some say as low as 50 per hour. If it’s for a buddy or friend I have trouble charging. As far as these parts and as little time as it took to do the cad I can eat that. I make thousands of these parts a year. On the artsy stuff I just usually round price off and figure it as cad. My wife like to do a lot of our artsy stuff she help me out a lot she has a good eye for it and more free time than I have.
