Design of plasma table, high rails or low rails?

[Apples]

I have been thinking about the design of some cnc plasma tables. Particularily the ones that have the rails up high like the dyna cnc table and the dynatorch machines, tracker etc.

How does the rails being up high effect the loading of sheets of steel?

Are they in the way all the time?

Apples

[jcc3inc]

Hi Apples,

I've spent a lot of time in shops using oxyfuel and plasma equipment. The shops are typically dirty and the equipment gets some rough usage. The plate is brought to the cutting machine by either overhead crane or a forklift in some cases. And you will see the crane operator sitting in his little box way up there along the wall! These means of handling heavy stock are NOT precise, and things get banged up in the process. To minimize risk to the necessarily semi-precise rails of the cutting machine, it is good practice to have the cutting table (usually a very rugged structure) at a higher level than the machine rails. Also, for heavy plate, the cutting table is NOT connected mechanically to the machine rails, so if the cutting grates are slightly displaced by a mishap in setting down a 2 ton workpiece, the machine rails are not affected.

For machines which cut gauge material, often times the cutting table is an integral part of the cutting machine, and becomes part of the stiffening structure; here the machine rails can still be placed lower than the surface of the cutting table. Sometimes the workpiece is loaded by hand for lighter stuff.

Jack C.

[edwardpic]

My Dynatorch table uses a drop side on the X axis and its great for loading steel. I also use a forklift to load full sheets of 5X10 from 16G to 3/8's. I blow the machine off after every days use and havent had a problem yet. I did spray the drop side rack with welding tip spray and no slag has stuck to it yet. Hope that helps.

[Torchhead]

Both of the tables I have built use end loading. I have rollers on the end cross piece and a set of roller tables to set the sheet on. SInce I don't cut stuff bigger than 1/4" it slides across the slats pretty easy. I guess if I was cutting heavier plate I would use an overhead approach.

Since I buy my material locally and pick it up in an F150, sliding the pieces off onto the rollers works good. Everything is close to an exterior rollup door and I just back up and off load a sheet at a time as I cut. Most often it's just me alone and handling big sheets is a hassle. 90% of what I cut will fit on 4 X 4 sheets so I buy my material already sheared to that size.