Your sign reminded me of the passing of Ken Block. 
Glad you got it worked out.
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‘Twas in his honor, Knick. I never got to meet Ken Block; we had a mutual friend, and I always kind of hoped I would get to. I gotta say though, for the passing of someone I never knew, I’ve been really affected by it. Just super bummed out. If you haven’t watched the documentary about his ‘22 US Rally Championship chase, I highly recommend it. It’ll definitely make you feel all the feels. 
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Nice job. Looking like you got this figured out.
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Nice work!
Great post following up with the list of things you changed/results. Some of the threads understandably wander around so much during problem solving it’s hard to follow “cause - effect” and catch the solutions. A good summary is nice to get at the end.
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So…perhaps I have spoken too soon, here…
Along with my quickly wasted consumables, I noticed that there was evidence of quite a bit of arcing between the nozzle and the electrode. This pair has 13 pierces and about 3 minutes of total cut time on them (at ~45ipm), but the other two pairs that came with my machine look about the same, with similar usage.
As this IS my first rodeo, I had assumed this was normal…
So, the cuts were going pretty nicely (cutting completely and with minimal dross, BUT I am still chasing a bit of angle/taper).
Then on pierce #14 of today’s experiment, the Primeweld Cut60 failed to fire, and after testing EVERYTHING else that I possibly could, I noticed that the Overcurrent light on the plasma cutter had triggered. The circuit that this plasma cutter is on is a dedicated 220V/50A service, 6awg THHN, and brand new everything. The panel’s circuit breaker never triggered.
Long story short, no matter what I do, the overcurrent light triggers immediately after torch firing is attempted. There is a hiss from the torch (more like an exasperated sigh), and then nothing else. I disconnected the machine from the table and tried using the hand torch, with identical results.
So, Primeweld had already gone home for the day when this happened, but, is my 3 week old plasma cutter dead? And was the arcing inside the consumables a “sign” of whatever caused the plasma cutter to fail? And if Primeweld wants to send me a new cutter, should I insist that they send me a new machine torch, too?
Yes it is dead. Call them tomorrow they will get it taken care of.
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Any thoughts or speculation on what might have happened George!? Hoping it’s just a bad unit somehow…
At this point I’m having a small amount of Hypertherm-envy/Primeweld buyers remorse.
It happens, it doesn’t matter what you buy it can be bad.
Look at the guy that just bought a 2023 zo6 vette $208 G 135 miles and the motor went.
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I posted a pic of mine in the other related thread. It looked identical. Like you, I thought that was normal until others educated me.
My machine is three years old with a lot of hand cutting time before I got the LS Pro. Never any issue hand cutting. As far as I know, all my tips/electrodes may have looked like that. It is still cutting great…until it mis-fires. I hope it is not going to fail completely like yours as I think I am passed the 3 yr warranty. Need to confirm it.
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UPDATE: I have a replacement unit on the way 1-1/2 hours after contacting Primeweld Customer Service
But, still read below, because it’s interesting regarding air pressure recommendations and internal tip arcing. It will be very interesting to see how the new unit performs compared to the old one.
Original Post
Well, I called. Gene wanted to know if the cutter just died in the middle of a cut, or if I was experiencing any bad performance ahead of the failure.
I mentioned the exceptionally short consumable life and evidence of internal arcing. He said I have a moisture problem. I told him about my air setup, and he asked if I was using my plasma on a water table. I said I was. He said that if you’re using your plasma on a water table there’s not much you can do to keep your consumables from arcing internally. I told him it seemed really excessive, and said that I thought the Cut60 was up to the task of CNC use, and then I reiterated that I’ve only had my machine up and running for a couple of weeks. He wanted me to email him some pictures, so that’s where we’re at now. After looking at the pictures of my consumables, Gene at Primeweld told me the level of arcing I am seeing is NOT normal.
That was 30 minutes ago, so we’ll see how quickly he gets back to me with a resolution. If I don’t hear back in a couple hours I’ll call again. I’m always very calm and collected on the phone, but the reality is that I’m pretty furious over having a dead machine that’s only a month old with about four cuts on it.
@mechanic416, Gene also told me I should try turning the air pressure down from his book settings, which I thought was odd, given how much advice I’ve been getting here to go above and beyond his book settings to fix my cut quality issues. Though I wonder how much of those cut quality issues have been caused by whatever made the machine crap out?
Anyway, I’ll keep you all posted.
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Man, thanks for the update. Makes me feel a little better about my situation, and yours too. I thought my issue is moisture related and I am still going to try and dry my air better.
I will say Primeweld is awesome on customer service. If there is any doubt, they will ship you a new unit even before you return the one you have. I know someone who they did this for already.
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And just like you said, I have a new unit on the way, 1-1/2 hours later.
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high air pressure is not the cause of internal arcing due to water splash. To low of air pressure at torch will cause excessive arcing and excessive heat, destroys consumables.
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I sort of would like to hear his reasoning for saying lower pressure reduces contamination. If anything higher pressure may cause higher splash back, but that higher pressure also creates a stronger barrier from anything entering the torch. He definitely knows his machines best, I just don’t understand how that’d work
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If you’re running clean dry air at enough pressure to open up the blow back arcing should not happen in that location to that extent.
Turning down the air pressure to stop splash back from the table from getting into the nozzle in my opinion sounds like total horsesh*t 
I also would love to hear an explanation of how the physics of that works.
There’s a lot of companies that do completely submerged cutting of stainless steel.
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@rat196426, @Teknic, @TinWhisperer, I’m not disagreeing with you guys. I’m just relaying what I was told, and the main reason I am doing so is because it seems counter to the consensus…so I’m questioning it.
The more time I get on this machine, the more I understand how it works, and I get why higher pressure would be better in regards to reducing arcing and increasing consumable life. Interestingly enough, I was still chasing some angle, and I knew my cut height was finally dialed in, so I had tried raising the pressure from the cut chart’s 50 (55!?) PSI all the way up to 75psi (which is the maximum you can run on the Cut60), right before the machine died. I had one successful pierce and cut at 75psi, and then the machine failed to fire on the next pierce.
Couple Gene’s recommendations, and this experience, along with Primeweld’s warnings about never exceeding 90psi at the back of the plasma cutter, and limiting the adjustment on their regulator to 75psi…and I just kind of wonder if air pressure isn’t the Cut60’s Achilles Heel…
Anyway, regarding the lower pressure recommendation, maybe Gene didn’t know I was using a machine torch, and thought water intrusion through the hand torch/trigger was somehow occurring!? He did ask me if I had wrapped the torch in plastic, which didn’t make sense as we were talking. I really don’t know. Regardless, I have a new machine on the way, and if it still arcs internally, I’ll be contacting Primeweld immediately.
Also, worth mentioning is that I know of a few folks now with newer Cut60’s who are having this same arcing issue…it seems that many people buying these machines are new to plasma cutting, and unsure of what is to be expected, and what isn’t.
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I guess it begs the question if it is the case using the primeweld torch on a water table will cause this issue why isn’t many many many more Langmuir users having this issue.
If it was true you would see this come up a lot more with primeweld users on the Langmuir.
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Before my machine died it was (finally) cutting somewhat decently. If I wasn’t a perfectionist, and hadn’t seen all of these beautiful cut examples on this forum, I might have chalked the top dross, angled cuts, and drastically short consumable life up to “just part of plasma”. And if I wasn’t already pretty active on this board, I wouldn’t have known that this arcing was abnormal. As such, I have a pet theory that the arcing issue is more common than we think; and, as this is an entry level machine, and these Langmuir machines have many new people getting into plasma cutting, it stands to reason that people might not be questioning the arcing. As I said above, I’m really curious to see if my new machine does it too.
I’ve been talking with someone on the Facebook Langmuir group who’s been chasing the same cut quality and consumable life issues that I have been. He bought his Cut60 at the same time as me, and we’ve both felt like there’s no way the pressure coming out of the torch is as high as what the regulator is reading; either the gauge is inaccurate, or there’s some kind of restriction/obstruction. Beveled cuts, top dross, drastically short consumable life; his cuts look worse than mine, and we’ve tried all the same fixes. He’s spoken with Gene @ Primeweld too, and Gene said he’s got moisture. His air drying setup is even more serious than mine. But his machine still works, so they’re not sending him a new one.
Bad batch of machines maybe? Who knows. I’ll know more in a week.
Curious, did the internal arc also happen on the hand torch?
I have both George’s machine torch and a primeweld machine torch. i only used the primeweld one for a couple of cuts but was giving me wiggly lines for some reason, and i have seen a couple of users on FB were having the same issue so i switched back to Georges because i needed to get some stuff out but never went back to diagnose the issue with the primeweld torch.
I’ll fire it up this weekend and run some test cuts to see if it arcs internally as well. now I’m curious if it’s something with the torch itself or what.
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I never got my hand torch to fire, @nicaDd. I only tried using it after the machine torch stopped firing, to test whether it was the torch or the cutter. I’d be very curious to know if you’re having a similar issue.