Me and a couple buddies pooled some money together and bought a plasma table for our shop. We would eventually like to make parts for ourselves to use on our hot rods, and maybe to sell to other hot rodders. So far I have been playing around with the machine and have a few questions for you guys that know what you are doing.
How much kerf should I allow for, when using different thicknesses of steel, so that I get parts with accurate dimensions? Are there standard settings that I should be using? Also, what about rules of thumb for feedrates and plasma amperages?
the machine I'm using is a MG Industries 5 x 10 w/ Burny 2.8 controls and 100 amp plasma. I'm also using Autocad LT for drawings and Turbonest to convert the drawings to G-code.
So far, I haven't found anything in Turbonest to compensate for kerf offsets or any other machine setting. However, the Burny allows me to input things like kerf, feedrate, and pierce settings. Is this the way all plasma tables are set up? It seems like it would be easy to make these settings on the PC instead of the machine controller.
Unfortunately, I don't have manuals for anything. It's all been trial and error up to this point. I have been able to make parts, they just seem to be either slightly oversized or undersized and sometimes have a lot of slag around the cuts. But it has been fun. Thanks for any input.