I work for a custom boat dock/boat lift manufacturer and we have decided to purchase a CNC plasma for processing some of our parts. I imagine our usage will average 1 to 2 hours per day over a year.

I have narrowed it down to practicalCNC and Torchmate. The quotes are basically all equipment minus PC.

One of the things we would like to do beside cut our flat plate parts which we now have to buy in bulk yearly, is to burn holes in 2"x6"x.188" rectangular tubing. These holes all have a pretty forgiving tolerance of +/- 1/16" for diameter and +/-1/8" for location.

We would like to be ably to get up to a 6" tall pc of tubing under the head. I am leaning towards the torchmate based the literature on their website, the rack mounted torch (6" of travel) , and what appears to be better technical support.

Currently all of the cutting here is either purchased or laid out by hand and cut by hand.

We are not looking for an incredibly "robust machine". Any ideas on different manufaturers or pros/cons of the two above are appreciated.

Thanks

Gerald Austin

I work for a custom boat dock/boat lift manufacturer and we have decided to purchase a CNC plasma for processing some of our parts. I imagine our usage will average 1 to 2 hours per day over a year.

I have narrowed it down to practicalCNC and Torchmate. The quotes are basically all equipment minus PC.

One of the things we would like to do beside cut our flat plate parts which we now have to buy in bulk yearly, is to burn holes in 2"x6"x.188" rectangular tubing. These holes all have a pretty forgiving tolerance of +/- 1/16" for diameter and +/-1/8" for location.

We would like to be ably to get up to a 6" tall pc of tubing under the head. I am leaning towards the torchmate based the literature on their website, the rack mounted torch (6" of travel) , and what appears to be better technical support.

Currently all of the cutting here is either purchased or laid out by hand and cut by hand.

We are not looking for an incredibly "robust machine". Any ideas on different manufaturers or pros/cons of the two above are appreciated.

Thanks

Gerald Austin

Hi Gerald,
Koike has some pretty nice tables (the real thing) aroun 30k,
Check them up...
REgards,
HEctor

Check out Tracker plasma tables. Not only are they a very good machine but the support is fantastic.

never set a pace that you can't maintain

Try Precision Cutting Systems 403-720-1984, bought my table from them.

Industrial table at good prices. Good tech support. Head height will accomodate the tubing.

Regards,

Paul

I purchased from PracticalCNC and was very dissapointed. They tried to resolve problems that came up but it became evident that they actually knew almost nothing about electronics and software. They were not bad people but they just did not know much.

JerryRigger

I have a Plasmacam that I'm selling. It's a 2001 "98-Z". Used 6mos. Took me 2 years to figure out how to get it running. It works fine but the manual seemingly was written by someone who never had to use it. Missing commands, lots of flipping back and forth like a ping pong game to resolve issues, terrible tech support at the time. Several plasma-owner users groups helped tremendously with any and all issues. I drove to Reno, Nevada to visit Torchmate. I was impressed. In the 5.5 hrs I spent checking out the machine and software, the tech support line rang 2 times. That said a lot to me! The auto nesting feature is irresistable.
Laura

http://www.dynacnc.com/

Gerald,
this table really is the very best of the hobby type tables.
It will cut as acurate as plasma can cut. Koike and Esab's
new tables are nice but are twice the price and will not cut
any better at all. I happen to know most the people that
have input on the DynaCNC table, because they have helped
me get my Practica CNC table working like it should.
The THC is Tom Caudles and the software for the
controllor is Mach 3 . The code generator is Sheetcam,
and you can use what ever cad program you want.
They are all really great people to deal with.


http://www.dynacnc.com/