The jagged edges most likely are caused by some roughness in the motion...if you put your hand on the torch while it is contouring...and you notice any vibration or roughness..it will show up in the cut. You don't mention what plasma, what consumables and what power level. Are you using arc voltage height control? If the z axis is too tight it can cause oscillation that will produce edge roughness as wel...but usually not as severe as the pics indicate.
To minimize the taper...use the lowest power and the smallest consumable and the lowest speed for the material and thickness you are cutting. If it is a Hypertherm Powermax plasma..the FineCut consumables will dramatically iprove taper.
The rounding of the corners is likely due to drive tuning....it looks like your gains are pretty sluggish (you can see some heat affected shadows where the motion essentially stops)....I'm not sure of the drive tuning methods for your equipment...but you should look into this. For plasma cutting you want maximum acceleration and de-acceleration....tune the gains so to the point where the machine starts to oscilate when exiting a sharp corner (verify with a pen in the torch holder) then back off slightly until the oscilation stops.
Not bad for the first cuts!
Jim Colt  |