Plasma Noob — Looking for feedback

Hi all, I am brand new to plasma. I am, however, CNC and CO2 laser proficient, so my concerns are predominantly with plasma cutting in general. I am hoping for a bit of feedback on some first cuts to understand if what I am seeing is mostly normal, or whether I am way off in left field and I simply don’t know enough yet to realize it.

Sample video — VOLUME warning:

I had to tighten the Z-axis coupler to the stepper, but otherwise, the machine was good to go out of the box. I picked up some 22 gauge steel from the big box store for testing, and I filled up the table with an appropriate ratio of SterlingCool and water. The air compressor is hooked up with both an inline desiccant dryer and a water/oil separator. The plasma cutter is an Everlast 52i on 220V, and wired for raw voltage. Air pressure at the unit shows 70PSI (center of indicator — green) when air is flowing. Amperage is set to 45.

I initially had a variety of THC and pierce errors, but I was able to get things working by reducing the pierce height and significantly reducing the pierce delay, all the way to 0.3 seconds (full settings pictured below). This seems much lower than what I have seen recommended in the documentation and others’ settings. Upon further reading, I suspect this could have to do with the thinness of the material, and that I may need to reduce both the cutting power and air pressure — any recommendations here are welcome.

Also, is it normal to have fog in the room after cutting? Is this dangerous? I can just open the garage door if I need to, but this means no cutting at night. Thanks.

Some test cuts:

Tip check…normal?:

Working settings (no errors thrown):

Thanks again for any insight.

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First, welcome to the forum!

I don’t use firecontrol (I have an older system) so I can’t comment on Pierce Delay, but the pierce height looks low to me. I use 0.150" and your kerf setting seems large (I’d expect 0.045-0.05), but that will mostly make your cutout object larger and inside holes smaller than design.

Overall it looks pretty good for first cuts. I’ve done butterflies before but they didn’t come out as nice as yours.

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Zinc oxide poisoning is no fun.

"
This leads to a condition known as metal fume fever . Symptoms of metal fume fever include a metallic taste in the mouth, fever, headache, chest pain, and shortness of breath. Symptoms start about 4 to 12 hours after breathing in the fumes and may result in serious injury to the lungs."

it looks like you are cutting a galvanized coating, which is zinc.

I wear a face shield with a adflo and I ventilate the shop while cutting any material.

3NLY9_AS01

All the fumes are bad.

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I appreciate the feedback. It kept throwing an error and telling me my pierce height was too high until I reduced it. But I am going to try again later with some lower power and air settings to see if that helps to bring things back into the expected range. And I will play with the kerf and run some sizing tests. Thanks for the advice.

Thanks much!

Yikes. No, doesn’t sound like it. Good to know. I was under the impression that the water table was supposed to catch most of the fumes, so I was a bit surprised when I noticed the haze. But I immediately opened the garage to ventilate and pointed my big industrial fan out the door, then exited the area. I will definitely take a look at the gear you posted! Thank you for the recommendations.

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Here’s a little more information from your Everlast manual.

When they use the word “weld” it’s interchangeable with cut.

It will minimize the particulates getting kicked up in the air but that’s it. It helps reduce what’s going to end up in the air but it doesn’t eliminate it.

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I also had to switch out the headgear on my sellstorm face shield to accommodate using a adflo .


It is an adflo headgear adaptor.

https://images.app.goo.gl/naDjDa77dPXBoJZz5

Sellstorm face shield

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What software was throwing the error? I didn’t think SheetCam would care and I’d expect Firecontrol to consider anything within about 0.300" within valid limits.

@TomWS I would assume his combination of vastly reduced Pierce delay and Pierce height was causing firecontrol to throw an error.

Interesting. I can see that if the plunge rate is low. Fairly intolerant if you ask me (which, of course, you won’t :wink:

I am referring to FireControl, particularly the THC system, in all cases regarding error messages. I may be over-summarizing this particular error message. I will screenshot in the future. I think it was something about the THC losing arc voltage, then it telling me the pierce height was too high.

On the contrary, these were the settings that worked. I only reduced them because the more “normal” settings were the ones throwing errors. I have since seen another post that seemed to imply at the current power and air setting, I could be blowing away too much material and losing the arc at the start of the cut. If this is off base, I’d be interested to hear more.

That does sound like the right answer.

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I also run a 52i and I would try reducing the power to 30 amps at the same cut speed, .040-.045 kerf width, go back to .15" pierce height and lower the flowing air pressure to between 60 and 65psi.

Smoke from cutting is normal, even with uncoated steel and aluminum. Its not good for you, so you should have some type of ventilation or breathing filter.

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Okay. Thanks. I will try what @ds690 recommends below for settings on the 52i. I’m sure it’s just my ignorance. But I have to start somewhere.

Excellent. Thank you for the tip. Assuming this works for me, do you happen to have a chart or SheetCam toolset for the 52i that I could use as a starting point?

FWIW, I had already bought the 52i thinking I was going to build a DIY plasma table when I found the CrossFire. Otherwise, I likely would have gone with the recommended unit.

Understood. I have a standard 3M respirator with the pink P100 filters that I can use in the meantime — assuming that’s sufficient? Nothing as nice as the Adflo listed above, but I will be doing some research.

I have Sheetcam tools that work pretty well for me, but I’m always experimenting with improving them Most of my work is on 16, 14 and 11 gauge steel, so those are the tools I have the most experience with. I have some stuff that works with 3/16 and 1/4" steel and aluminum, but they could definitely be improved.

I haven’t cut any 22 ga, so I’m just extrapolating from my 16 ga tool. I cut 16ga at 30 amps and 150IPM, so you should be able to bump that over 200ipm for 22 ga.

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Well, you have to understand that Manual Man, AKA @TinWhisperer holds the major manufacturer’s hostage by controlling access to their manuals. So all he has to do is call them up and say “I want that” and they’ll send it to him without question…

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Not sure if it too late for this “remedy” but old welders will tell you to drink milk after zinc. I think the calcium in milk helps to pull it out of you. Even if it doesn’t work, its cheap to try. Just in case you have more of it, I wouldn’t cut any more of that metal.

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I am fine, but that’s a great tidbit to know. I suspect at least a portion of the haze was water vapor as a lot of water made its way up onto the metal surface during that last cut, and it was the first time seeing the haze. But I am going to be playing it safe and avoiding any galvanized material moving forward. That was the only piece I had purchased.

I will definitely be looking into some sort of fume extraction as well, as I have since seen some interesting ideas in this forum.

It’s interesting because I have very few fumes or dust blown around the shop. I am cutting mostly stuff that is done at 55 psi but even at 65 psi I’m not noticing much. I wonder if that’s part of it the higher air pressures required by some cutters?

I had the air up to 70psi when flowing (~75psi static), which was likely too high for this material. I’m not sure how big of a fume issue I really have, but it should be relatively easy to rig something up as a basic hood or extractor to move some air outside. I’d rather just go ahead and play it safe.

I have a pro in my home garage. I built a booth with 3 each 20 inch box fans. The garage door is open 20 inches and the fans blowing under the door. Cheap ac filters over the fans. I keep away durring cuts until the smoke clears.

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