I have been looking at the Hypertherm plasmas for my CNC gantry type machine, and have settled on a Powermax 1000 for the task. Beyond that power level, my electric wont support the larger machines, and the cutting speed of the larger conventional machines is identical on 1/4 inch aluminum, the material I"ll be cutting most. I've noticed Hypertherm is marketing an upgrade torch for their older Hyperformance plasma, alongside the air plasma machine torches for my series of machines.
Beyond the obvious fact that the high definition torch is designed to run at currents up to 200 amps, and ferrous materials are cut with Oxygen plasmas in high definition, is there any reason the HD torch could not simply be run off the conventional power supply? HD plasma in aluminum is accomplished with air plasma, so no problem there, the currents are the same for the material I'm using, and providing an adaptor to the electrical connections shouldn't be a huge problem, so why could it not be done? It seems the power supplies put out the same voltage and low range current for both systems, so with regards to Aluminum air plasma, what is missing from the equation? It would be nice to have that long consumables life and narrow kerf.