That's when you either forget why you NEEDED to drill/machine carbide/tungsten, or dig in your wallet a couple orders of magnitude DEEPER than that plasma cutter
EDM | Makino
Back in 1980 I was just starting a job in industrial instrumentation in a rare metals plant; got handed the
VERY dubious honor of being responsible for the
GREAT GRAND DADDY of EDM's - my company had a small military contract to make "steering vanes" for a certain missile.
The vanes
actually sat IN THE FLAME of the rocket propulsion, and were cast from
SOLID TUNGSTEN in order to withstand the heat. They mounted to actuators with
3 holes that WE HAD TO DRILL
My "nemesis" was already old when I got there - It was what's now called a "Sinker EDM". It had a 1200 volt power supply and was all TUBES; to get around the current limitations, it had 18 "beam power tubes" all bussed together in parallel. The idiot who ran that dept was incapable of learning, so I had to explain to him every time he called, that
tubes start out in a slow descent into FAILURE - He never DID get smarter, just kept saying "it USED to burn that fast"
Back to plasma; my PM45 needs to be "sorta" portable, so it sits on a rollaway tool cabinet (which doubles as consumable storage for MIG, TIG and Plasma) - my compressor is the SMALLEST industrial one the local compressor store sells (5 horse Baldor, 80 gallon,
inter-cooled, pressure lubed all cast iron, 21 CFM @ 175 psi) - so for "portability" I put together a "helper" separator
full pressure air enters top right in the pics; goes thru a "pre-regulator" down to 125 psi, then thru a "painter's filter" with a water drain, then a Motorgard filter and up to the plasma.
I get several hundred feet of cut on a set of consumables, for me that's more than acceptable.
Don't plan on cutting much carbide, so my "toy money" is temporarily SORTA safe :laughing: ... Steve