Plasma bevelling

[Jim Davey]

Many of you will be aware of this, but I'm sure some won't know that you can bevel plate with a plasma cutterto form a prep prior to welding. A customer of mine had several meters of bevel to create on some Strenx700 hardened steel.
I have a bevelling machine (high speed tct milling cutter basically on a carriage, but that couldn't cope with the harder material and spat half its teeth out) so here is plan B which actually removed the stock a hell of a lot faster. Even allowing for the fact it will need a clean up with a grinder before it can be welded this proved to be a real time saver.
The underside looks a little rough due to dross (which is very easy to remove) and a couple of slips here and there due to the learning curve. The client however was very happy as the alternative was a long time hanging off the back of a 9" grinder, not something anyone looks forward to.

Hope this saves someone else a bit of time and effort and gets a job out the door faster, safer and more profitably. Have a good weekend folks.

 

[Hitch]

A good clean up with a soft compound 9" disc now to even it up and remove the hard layer.

 

[gt6s]

You could make a very simple sliding jig to guide the torch an angle off the material edge, a short piece of inch angle and short piece of tube to fit the torch would be my thoughts. For starters anyway.

Laurence

 

[Jim Davey]

Yes that would work well, however after a few minutes we were getting very good results using just the notch in the end of the contact cutting spacer that was already fitted to the torch.

 

[fizzy]

I will have to try that.
Having said that remembered my Startrite bandsaw has a tilting table - not so good on big heavy items though.