Well just over 1yr and a rust hole in the pan the size of a silver dollar. Should have known this would happen.
Has anyone had any experience with primer/paint that will withstand the chemical and plasma on these type of tables?
Isn’t the pan stainless? How does it rust?
I doubt it is a hole from rust,probaly blew a hole in pan from torch? I have been using my XR for over two years now and almost 530 hours of cut time on table and no holes in water pan. I use plasma green additive in water.
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Painted mild steel water pan…
If your pan is mild steel, then you should probably use an anti-corrosive additive. I use Plasma Green 1050. My pan is stainless but I have zero rust on slats.
Rusting through a mild steel pan still seems unlikely under all but the worst case scenarios.
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I suppose you could be correct but this looks like rust to me. To the best of my knowledge I have never cut without fluid in this pan. I cut it out with a hole saw and will install drains. No one is familiar with some good paint to put on this? Not sure Rust oleum will hold up to the chemicals.
The XR pans are painted mild steel, when cutting thicker material, you have longer pierce time that will create more heat transfer to one spot of pan eventually will cut away material of pan and if doing a lot of cutting in one certain area of table all the time will also eat away pan material. Do you use additive in water table.
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I would completely guess at this but I would suggest this machine to have less than 50hrs of run time in just over 1yr. Comments here are suggesting these pans are SS and I disagree. This is just bad paint jobs and crap materials. The though that I cut in one spot is no go and really nothing over .185 with occasional 1/2 material.
Yes I use the mix
1/4 pound of sodium nitrite powder (rust inhibitor)
1 teaspoon of Physan 20 (anti fungus)
1.5 oz Blue food-grade dye (contrast additive)
The other panels do not seem to be this bad. As you see in the last 2 pics the paint is bubbling so I wire brushed it and to me that is rust building quite badly with zero signs of burn marks
I would suggest to everyone with this machine to inspect the pans as they are not cleaned well before painting them and they are definitely flacking and rusting. This is not something you want to see.
That’s weird, I’m using the crossfire pro smaller machine but it’s definitely stainless on the smaller machine and I run Borax in the water about a cup per gallon if I remember correctly. It works pretty well and not even my slats rust so the borax definitely prevents corrosion in my experience
I haven’t tried borax but I might give it a shot. I have just painted and set up a complete drainage system so I will see what happens. There is a guy on here that did a video of a filtration system he made and I can not find it again for the life of me but I am very interested to give that a shot if I can find the 100g tank he used at a reasonable price
Purchase 5 gallons of plasma water additive and be done, borax leaves white build up on table and whatever else it splashes on.
I added 3 gallons of plasma green to 75-gallon water tank for my XR table and just top off tank with water when needed, haven’t added any additive in past two and a half years, still have 2 gallons of plasma green in jug. No rust or corrosion on XR table or metal material left over from cutting…
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I have been following this thread very interested in comments and thoughts on the rusted steel pan. I just sold my crossfire pro 2 days ago with the stainless pan and take delivery of my XR on Thursday. I never bothered with the Pro but the thought of the pan rusting on the XR has consumed my mind because i know that no matter how good the paint job is, rust will eventually have its way without preventative measures. I have searched for an affordable solution for additives but they are expensive and many get poor reviews. I think i found the solution i am going to try but i have seen very little info on it so i thought i would post it here and see if anyone has used it and people’s thoughts.
Test Tank Powder for Plasma Table Cutting and Radiator Repairs -12 Oz each bag - Made in the USA (3 Bags) [amazon]
It gets great reviews it’s cheap and it looks like 3 bags will last you forever. And it doesnt take up any storage space. I have no personal experience with it yet. I will report back when i do but im hoping someone on here does and will offer more info and an opinion.
Excellent post Ammocan. Your right, there is not much that will stop rust altogether especially if the paint job is shotty at best. There is zero way in my mind that some of these guys are getting years out of their additive. They are not using the table then.
You now have me interested in this and I have placed an order to try a bag and see what happens.
I just filled up my table yesterday with Nitrite but I will need to drain it and flush it again in a week or two to check and see how my paint job worked and will fill with this. Please keep your results coming. I also have a boiler heating system I would like to try this on.
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I have over 500 hours of cut time on my XR Table in two and a half years of owning it, no rust because I use the plasma water additive and drain table at end of day of cutting. After my neck heals up, I will clean water table and snap pics of bottom to show no rust. additive isn’t expensive, doesn’t evaporate just top off with water. Been using Plasma green in my pro table for four years now and still have three gallons of it left in 5-gallon jug …
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Sorry to hear about your neck. Just out of curiosity can you estimate the cost of the tanks, pumps, fittings? How much time does it take to fill the pan back up?
I believe people can go years with additives in their water tables and use them depending on their process for managing it. If you get the chemistry right there is no reason why it would rust. I also noticed that this Johnson powder mix utilizes the technology that drops out solids which should mean all the contaminates are at the bottom. This means when it’s time to clean the table you could pump 90% of the clean solution right off the top into a holding tank and pump it back in when the table is clean. It’s also so cheap that you could just flush the table and start over. Three bags for 26 bucks would last years.
I don’t have the tolerance, time, patients, or discipline to drain my water pan every day. Truth be told, it will stay full almost all the time. I am convinced that the pan will be protected with a good additive. I also agree that 200 bucks for 5 gallons isn’t really that expensive especially if it preserves your pan and can keep getting reused but if I can accomplish the same thing for 26 bucks and it can be stored in a drawer then im all about it.
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I bought the tank on sale 75-gallon, pump pipe/fittings were $260. 4- minutes to fill water table 8- minutes for it to drain. I added a drain to the two middle water pans that did not have drains.
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How do you keep trash and sediment out of your tank? if I let my table sit for a day then everything settles to the bottom and I could see an opportunity to take the clean fluid off the top but if i drained my table into a tank after running it for a bit with everything churned up I would think that sediment would all settle in the bottom of my tank and make for a nightmare to clean. I’m curious how you deal with this issue. is there something in your process you do to keep the crap out of the tank? are you filtering your fluid?