Berlan Plasma Cutter bought off ebay

Hi Guys,

there's been a number of these sold recently on ebay, at least two a day and around 26 in total so far. Prices range between £150 and £260 with another £20 delivery, I got mine for £186 and it was delivered yesterday (took a full week to get here).

The company are in Germany and the manual (written in German unfortunately!) states 'CE' on the front cover. I can make out some of the instructions...

max cut to 12mm

20 - 40A output

230v single phase input

4.7KVA input

96V out

work cycle 60%

HF oscillator ? (starting up?)

4.5 bar 120 ltr/min

weight 9 kg.





It's relatively easy to set up, plug the various things into the relevant socket, but does anyone know what the 2.5s and 5.0s refer to please?





the torch looks fairly standard although to TBH I've not had much experience with these things. The lead and air-line are 5 metres long whch is pretty good, but the earth lead is only 2 metres. The earth lead has a decent clamp though. Also the torch has a nice blue zip-up bag to give it some pretection if travelling.





there's a regulator with a plastic/perspex bowl at the bottom, I assume to let water out? and this sits in an 'L' shaped bracket that I welded onto a market stall clamp so I could move it around if I need to. In the photo I've lifted the regulator slightly so you can see the bracket/clamp, it normally sits vertical.

There are a couple of connectors and jubilee clips supplied but I decided to keep the air-lines short-ish on the unit so I could move it around easier and I'll use an extension line from the compressor.

Obviously there's a slight leak-off on the push-fit connector but that's on the 'line' side of the regulator so it shouldn't be a problem. I needed a couple of extra jubilee clips and a connector.





So I found this bit of 5mm plate and set the unit to 2.5s, 20Amps, 2 bar (about 30psi?) and made my first cut, the middle one in the photo, not very pretty!

I upped the current to 25A and made the cut on the right, getting better.

The last attempt, on the left, was at 30A and looks pretty good with the cut going all the way through except for a couple of spots about 5mm long where I probably jerked my hand forward slightly.

Obviously I need to practice a lot more so I'll have another go over the next few days with other adjustments...more air/amps, use the '5.0s' setting and also with different thicknesses of metal.

So far it's impressive. It's very quiet in use! Build quality is OK (considering the price!) the only dodgy things I noticed was a slight 'ding' in the torch power connector on the front cover, but the connector fastens up OK, and a couple of paint runs/bubbles.

I'm hoping that it can use 'standard' consumables...

I assume the ceramic cup can get damaged and the electrodes will need replacing eventually.

Can anyone else suggest what will need replacing with wear?

Does anyone know where I can see a diagram of a cutting torch so I can reference these parts?

Also, can anyone give me any advice on using a plasma cutter please, ie, rough estimate of amps, air, 2.5s / 5.0s, etc, for metal thicknesses of, say, 3mm, 6mm, 9mm & 12mm? I can then work out the rest as I go along.

Regards
Peter

Hi Peter.

We always seem to leave our turned up flat out, just adjust your speed to suit. Probably not the best method, but save keep adjusting it!

You will be able to see when you are getting a clean cut, you wont have any sparks ontop of the sheet. When you do, slow down a bit.

You mention your hand may have jerked forward... i nearly always pull it toward me, always seems much easier for me.
You can run them along another stip of metal to cut a straight line aswell. Dont use your best steel rule incase you slip

You can get a piece of bent wire to fit to the torch which rests on the workpiece and keeps the tip the correct and a constant distance from the work.

The plastic bowl collects water, it may drain automatically through a valve on the bottom when you disconnect the air supply, or you may have to turn, push or pull the valve to drain it manually.

When starting a cut away from an edge tilt the torch slightly so molten metal is deflected away from the nozzle, bring it perpendicular as the cut proceeds, On thicker metal it may help to drill a hole at the start of the cut.

I have seen that guy sell Berlan mig/mag and tig/wig (wtf is 'wig' ?) for £70 or £80. I dont supose they are any good ? Does anyone know about them or own one ? Are they Chinese or summat ?

most likely chinese in manufacturing orgin, a good Esab or hypertherm plasma is in excess of 1000, the parweld ones are over 500 and as far as i know are chinese, but have a reasonable degree of backup

zardoz said:

(wtf is 'wig' ?)

Click to expand...

hehe, I saw those on the bay of e and was wondering myself I think it's just the german equivalent of tig but I'm not too sure. Can't think what a wig welder would look like. Glue gun???

We had a little inverter Hypertherm on demo last week, 8mm clean cut, £700, or £1300 with a free compressor

Was it from a vendor called "highweld"? Ive just won one of his plasmas for £196 inc delivery, much better than giving 450 notes to the french guy selling the same thing, and as its in the EU no import tax to pay extra either! They never seem to go for less than 220e, ive been bidding on them for about a fortnight now, so one suspects if thats the threshold that he needs them to make to break even...
Im going to frig a table arm clamp up to hold it down and to one side of the table on the little cnc mill Im sposed to be getting soon to make a little ad-hoc cnc cutter
He's calling his plasmas "highweld" brand now, but they are undoubtably badged chinese ones...

Hi Guys,

thanks for the tips.

I spent most of the day re-arranging my workshop, well, the right hand side anyway, as I needed space to get the lathe in.

So it was a bit late before I tried some more cutting.

I tried various settings up to 40A and 4 bar and noted the differencs. It all seemed to go OK.

I also noted, as Hitch said, that at some point there's no sparks above the metal and the cut is pretty good.

I did find that I kept loosing the plasma 'flow' as I assumed I lifted my hand a little and lost the arc but it re-started as I dropped my hand.

As I didn't have any thicker plate available I tried two 5mm plates one on top of the other. The micrometer showed it was 10.7mm and it cut well at 40A and 4.5 bar.

So after a little while and making some dinky little cubes of steel, I though I'd try the 5.0s setting...

it burnt out the tip!

Although, again, it was probably my fault as my hand dropped and the tip was in contact with the metal for at least 3 seconds on full power. The original hole in the centre has filled with weld as if I'd dipped into a weld-pool and then it blew a new bigger hole off centre.

It'll be a few days till I can get a new tip but then for the next few evenings I'll be continuing the workshop re-arrangements anyway.

Regards
Peter

I dont know how your getting on with your cutter peter, but my "highweld" cut40 arrived yesterday, and in the box were all that you mention above + 3 spare shrouds & tips.
Ive just tried it on some 3mm stainless, and took the resultant acid smiley cut into a piece of stainless sheet to show mrs f. Her comment? oh you could use that to make some mobiles for xmas...
Cut is a little burned looking, and I seemed to have to almost touch the torch on the sheet to get a nice cut, plus you can hear the crack crack crack of the hf start working and the plasma starts up in line with one of the cracks. When I cranked it up to 30amps for a bit of thicker stock, it tripped out my mains current breaker, but as it was -1 this morning, theres every chance the 3 phase immersion that runs the underfloor heating is loading up 10amps of my 25 per phase supply and for the first part of the test the compressor was running, so thats another 5amp gone. Ill try it when the sun comes out and the solars are working and I have a full tank of air...
Specs on the welder are I2 @ 22amps, which should be well inside the safe range my high current sockets in the workshop can handle, the 40amps is I1, which is plasma amps after the transformer. Instruction manual is all in german, so I just fed it from the workshop lines and set the reg to 2bar.
Im still happy, despite all the comments my mrs made to me about sending 200 quid to someone called Elvis Durmski via bank transfer...
Elvis may have left the building, but he does a cracking deal on cheap plasmas with the import duty paid already...
Now to see if it still works tomorrow. Out of paranoia I left it switched on for about 5 mins after finishing the cuts to let the fan cool the internals down properly.

Ps in your photo of the reg, the clamp bracket is clamped by the nut thats outside of the adjusting nut, just in case your using the bowl to clamp it or something.

In theory a good quality plasma cutter, with good tip should produce a neat clean cut that is almost slag/dross free. I have found if you spray the underside before you cut with a little anti splatter spray, the slag seems to detach a little easier.

Hi Fluffy,

if you look around on ebay you'll see sets of shrouds (?), nozzles, electrodes and swirl rings, ten of each to a set, for around £15 - £18 delivered.

The data at the back of my instruction book (in German like yours) shows a maximum pressure of 4.5 bar but TBH it seems a bit harsh at that setting even on 10mm metal.

I've settled on 3 bar and 30 Amps as a good combination for anything up to 10mm.

I had another play last night on a bit of Catnic (wall joist) that I had kicking around. It's about 5mm thick and I was just trying to draw some chalk lines, ie, wavy lines, acute angles, etc, to follow.

I was using my gas welding goggles to see if I could see the lines without hurting my eyes and they seemed to be OK, although I'd prefer them slightly darker. I found I couldn't see much with a full welding mask with an 11 lens....

The bracket in the photo is welded onto a clamp and the regulator then slips into the bracket. It was some time after I'd made this mod that I saw a photo of another set on ebay were the regulator bracket was attached on the back of the unit, near the fan. When I looked at mine I found the fixing screws there!

Regards
Peter

i have one of the cheap plasma cutters, MITECH cut 40 or something

works well, ideal for occasional use and gets used allot at the garage when welding up rusty landrovers, quieter, faster and less dusty than an angle grinder!


with regards to a mask i wasnt sure what to use either, i used some gas welding goggles and i got blotches after a while. so i now use a face mask but hold it at arms length

i have tried without and its not advisable altho you can block out the arc with you hand

Its still an electric arc so you need to block out the harmful UV rays. Oxy/A is purely heat, so infra-red and bright light only.

I found with plasma cutters either gas welding goggles or tinted safety glasses are good enough, shade 9 helmet is a bit over the top. Works ok if you have one of the welding helmets that go as low as shade 5

I was doing simons hiding behind the torch head to obscure the arc earlier, but duly ordered some flip up welding goggles this pm...
Peter, it CAME with 3 extra shroud and tip sets is what I was trying to get across. So someones looked at the product and shipped them with it to improve it, it seems.
darren, will a plasma cut clean with no slag on stainless? I thought it might be a facet of the material I was cutting, I know its a pig to weld up... Ive got some murex anti splatter in a squirty, Ill give it a go...

All you people with the cut40 in the uk, do you have a copy of the manual in english bychance? My germans not up to much, and while it is very point and click to operate, It'd still be nice to read through it in case of gotchas...

if you find a place on ebay called shopriver they wil email you a manual

I use Parweld shaded safety glasses - they are fine for plasma

Manuals that relate to many of these generic designs can be dowloaded from; http://www.rilandusa.com/?p=Support

I just got my Berlan plasma yesterday. Seems to work just fine. After the Jasic TIG, the arc stater seems much quieter.

The switch; 2.5s/5.0s is the gas post flow to cool the tip down.

Hi,

I contact shop-river via ebay, it was them that I got my spare consumables from.

They've sent me a .pdf copy of the manual for ther cut 40/50/60/60s.

I also asked if they could supply parts such as electronics, cards, etc, and they said that they would be able to. No costs discussed as it was just a general enquiry.

For future reference their ebay shop is: http://stores.ebay.co.uk/welder-shop.

The only thing they couldn't supply was a service manual or circuit diagram.

EVguru, thanks for link and the update on the switch!

Regards
Peter