I have a older cutmaster 50 that is a pilot arc stye. It says Capacitive Discharge (CD), Ignition DC Pilot. Am I correct in assuming that this is not high freq? I am wondering about compatability. Please help.
Welcome to the forum!
‘pilot arc’ simply means that the plasma will start without you having to touch the tip to the workpiece to generate the initial arc. It has no bearing on HOW the arc is started.
I’m afraid you are not correct in assuming that. It sounds like a HF start to me. However, I don’t know specifically and there are people on the forum who will know better than I.
1 Like
Manual
likely a HF start. not sure.
also the cutmaster need a “ok to move” signal, search there is a couple topics covering that,
Thankyou. I will look into that.
I’m 99% the Cutmaster 50 is not a HF start. It uses a pilot arc to initiate the plasma stream(see page A2 in the appendix). You can also look at the torch and tell if it’s HF or blow back pilot arc start. Remove the shield cup and see if the tip is spring loaded or fixed. If it’s spring loaded then it’s pilot arc. There should be a starter cartridge under the tip also which has the spring inside.
If it’s spring loaded then it’s blowback start. As I pointed out in my first post on this thread, Pilot Arc and how it’s started are two entirely different things.
You are right. I just took it apart. There is a spring loaded tip.
1 Like
Well I finally got through to a senior(as in older) gentleman at Thermal Dynamics. He confirmed it is a high frequency machine and most likely not a good candidate for cnc operation. Guess I might be plasma upgrade shopping.
2 Likes
Glad you got that figured out. As I said above, I was only 99%. Yours fell into the 1%… TD tech support people are first class in the help dept.!
1 Like