[BarnFab]

Ok so I have read a lot of posts and seen some great examples of what people get up to. With that in mind I thought I would take some time to details a few of our projects and show how much easier having a CNC Plasma Cutter make them.

I have an Arclight CNC Plasma Table with a 5 x 10 cutting area and have been running it for over two years now. I use to have a torchmate but their support went down hill rapidly and then when the sold out to Lincoln it got to a level which made me happy to sell the Torchmate and upgrade to an Arclight.

Anyway as a small shop having a plasma is not only a big investment in both time, space and money it is a great opportunity to find your niche. In our case the niche was in odd job, R&D and prototyping. With the 5 x10 table we re able to have a heap of different size material son oit day at day which allows us to quickly cut what we need without going through a load and unload situation. It also mean I can by the big sheets and save a few $$$.

The Arclight table itself is about 7' x 12' and when I ordered I got it with the Tube Cutter, Router, Plate Market and 85 Amp Hypertherm.

Anyway we are currently under the pump to build from scratch a new model Manxter DualSports for / with Meyers Manx. It will be called the Baja Edition and is entered in the Mexican 1000 in April 2015. Under most circumstances it would be INSANE to sign up to a time line like that knowing that the end product has to not only look good but also perform well enough to do over 1000 miles in Baja. But with tools like the CNC Plasma we are pretty confident we should be right as it allows us to do all of the production in house and thus can control the time line much better than if we were stuck outsourcing.

The first step we have is the need to build a Jig Table / Fixture to hold all the vital components in place. In this case it will be an IRS rear end with a Beam front. This is by no means a new design and has been around for years. The geometry is very important and fitting under the Manxter DualSport Body is also a must do. the table itself will be one of our existing squared and true rollers. No science in that get pig ass steel and weld it flat. We have them so the rails fit on the lift so we can move the job up and down.

Over the next few weeks I will detail the process we go through to build the fixture and show how much easier and quicker it is when you can cut material to accurate dimensions in a very short period of time.

Any questions please feel free to ask, I will primarily be concentrating on the Plasma table as it will be doing 90% of the fixture for me.

[BarnFab]

ok so with the shop clean and the days ticking I needed to get cracking. 1st thing I had to do was get the chassis level and get the front beam aligned so I could sling the body on and check how my wheel position and travel would be. Being that this is the 1st time we had used 4" over arms on the Manxter Dual Sports Body I needed to get a starting point.

Not having anything that would let me jig it and cycle the wheels without fowling the table etc I had to start with a new jig to let me get it onto the lift and clear the tires

The angles would be different to my current bench top so I started off in Bend-Tech SM with some rear torsion plates. These where needed as I had to come up with a way to let the chassis sit flat. With the way you draw in Bend-tech it was a pretty easy task to get the measurements right and get some plates sorted.



Of course if you are gunna do it you have to add some bling



Once done I simply export it to Plasma File in the interface and bring it into the software provided with the ArcLight CNC. Give it a tool path .. One of the great thinsg about the Acrlight CNC over some of the others which I have used is that the tool set they give you with the Plasma actually works. In all the time I have been using it I have only had to make a few minor tweaks to get the cut right and even then the supplied tool set was close enough most would have been very happy. When you cut a lot of different materials it is a nic thing to be able to use the supplied toolsets with confidence..



Make any changes I want such at cut sequence although the rules set when Arclight ship it means 99% you don't need to clown with it unless you are using the plate marker in the same process. Once you are happy export it to Mach3



The Mach3 config that it comes with means again you are pretty much ready to just go cut cut cut.

So find so space



Next to Mr Bunny looks like a nice patch of steel, not something you usualy see in a car shop but once you go CNC you open a lot of doors to work you never really thought about, fence signs for rabbits is just one of them lol.



Zero her out and Press the go button



Man I love that CNC Plasma, can't recommend one enough and anyone looking at an option I have had a few different brands and the ArcLight CNC ( arclightcnc.com) is by far the best. If you are around Valley center and want to check it out always happy give you an overview. Warning though you will never want to go back to a grinder

Ok anyway

Plates cut, repeat and get moving

With plates done I need to give the it some shape so it won't wobble around.



45 degrees should be fine .

Job done




Almost done . Check fit ...



Damn it my need to round corners has screwed me over, go back change dxf, repeat and cut with square corners.

[cncbaja]

Too bad the images are not available any more, I would love to see them!