CNC Plasma Cutters

[Andy A.]

Originally Posted by JohnFogarty

Is there a CNC Plasma machine any team uses that can hold tolerances good enough for FRC use? What price did you pay for yours if you did and what sort of things did you have to budget for in terms of consumables etc.

Define 'good enough'. I don't know passes your sniff test here.

95 uses plasma cut parts extensively and our table is not a particularly good example. Tolerances run about +/- .015" in aluminum sheet using a really nice torch consumables from Hypertherm (and a Hypertherm engineer on the team making sure it's all put together right). That's obviously still not good enough for something like a press fit bearing pocket, but plenty good enough for a lot of sheet metal parts.

For us .015" is fine, but that's largely because we know that's what the tool we have will do, and plan around it. When we need to do something like cut a bearing pocket or precisely locate a hole we'll do those features on a mill after blanking the part on the plasma cutter.