Okay...been a while since I was last here (Welcome back, jgramlich, there have been 146,333 posts and 20,236 threads since your last visit at 11:24 PM, 12-10-2010). I need some help reinventing the wheel.
A customer has a Farley plasma table. Slats too far apart for small parts, table not deep enough, parts stick up into the air, etc. For all intents and purposes, the torch is mounted on the gantry frame. There is no breakaway...in fact, the torch holder is encased in a steel frame of its own (on a 45 deg pivot for bevels). Effectively, when the torch crashes into something, it breaks...badly.
Perhaps it's original, perhaps its rigged, but there's a cage about 16" x 30" that hangs around the torch protecting a rectangular area around it....the idea being that if a part tips up, it hits the cage before the torch comes in range...the cage is on springs so moves easily. When it moves, it triggers a momentary contact switch...limit switch of sorts, triggering a stop.
This does not prevent a part right next to the torch and inside the cage (it's really just a single bar of steel bent into a rectangle) from causing major issues.
There is a place on the outside of the torch holder frame where I *could* mount a breakaway torch holder...do such things exist? There's going to have to be some custom fitting it, but no rocket science...torch hangs from above, cable suspended....lots and lots of beautiful slack to play with.
They've ruined two torch bodies this month due to this problem. Any and all thoughts or suggestions would be most welcome. Cost is a constraint (i.e. replacing the THC is not an option). It's a hypertherm 260 btw. There is a switch that can be actuated by motion...to trigger shutdown. That switch can also be replaced.