Hey guy, been working out various kinks with my plasma cutter since early this morning, justabt had everything going my way & this happens at the end of my cut! I was running 35a at 60ipm on 11ga , I stepped away from the table for 2 seconds to raise my shop door & heard the “screeching” from the plasma, it cut off by the time I ran back over. Any ideas what could have caused this?
This is only a guess, but I’m gonna say you dragged the nozzle along the metal While it was firing, wreaking havoc on your consumables and breaking it apart. Do you test your height across the entire work piece before you start cutting? Jog the torch across the work area and see if there are any pieces the torch will come in contact with. There is so much that can go wrong.
Hey gunny, I always do a dry run (no torch) before I cut, mainly because I’ve been wasting a good bit of metal lately by making simple mistakes. I will say that the metal I’ve been buying has been anything but flat, however, I did shim the metal as needed so I could move the torch around without incident… Until it was cutting that is. I’ll contact razorweld Monday just to see if there’s anything they can do but my guess is I’ll be purchasing a new torch instead!
Is there any way to get the electrode out at all? It looks maybe salvageable if you could get it out.
You can try and get it out, but the odds are it will mess up the threads and the torch head will need to be replaced.
This is caused when the hafnium is all used up in the electrode and the copper shell melts.
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I tried getting what was left of the electrode out with no luck, it got so hot that the sleeve around the threads melted. I read that pushing consumables w/ too much amperage for too long could be the cause but I only made 2 of these parts on this set of consumables, seems like they should have lasted longer.
That hafnium gets to 3500 + degrees when cutting. The electrode should be replaced when the dimple in the end gets to about 1/16" deep. If you don’t change them out soon enough this is what happens.
Thought I’d give an update, I received my new 40 torch head from mechanic, got it installed this evening and used the new (& correct) IPT consumables…Wow! What a difference in cut quality. I’m a believer now, for those who are still using s45 consumables in IPT torches, STOP! I couldn’t be happier. I also bumped my speeds up to 100 & amps up to 36 as suggested & the cuts are superb. 0 dross on front, clean cuts all around, and very minor spots of dross on back that flakes off w/ a fingernail. I’ll continue tweaking to see if I can get faster cut speeds but for the moment I’m more than pleased. Thanks for all of the helpful advise guys!
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