Super-light plasma cutter gantry

[hotponyshoes]

I bought some stuff from a chap yesterday.

Something else he is also selling is a few assorted parts for a plasma table build.
This is something I'd been thinking of doing for a while so I had a look..

For his gantry / Y axis he has a carbon fibre I-beam and a couple of lengths of titanium rail.

I get that the movable parts need to be light and stiff but do they really need to be that light?

To me, one big advantage of any cnc machine is that you can just set it running and go off and do something else.

Do normal plasma tables suffer much from the weight of the gantry?
Is the inertia the limiting factor on thin sheet?
Would you see a noticeable improvement in definition on curves/circles if the gantry was lighter?

 

[Dutch Welder]

A lighter gantry equals better quality cuts at higher speeds, as there is less inertia from the beam itself when doing corners and sharp acceleration.
If you are not running it as a full time thing (if you have other jobs to do when the machine is busy on a slower speed) then you could just lower the speed down and get the same quality cut with the machine just running slower.
If you do the cutting as the main job then speed is money, and a job doen quicker in theory is more money earned.

If the price is right, and the gantry is large enough for you then I would not hesitate to buy it, as you can run a lighter gantry at lower speeds, and have one less thing to build/engineer on your table.
I would not however pay a rediculous amount for it (as in 3 or 4 the times of a auminum or steel gantry, just for it being carbon)

 

[tom2207]

Maybe his day job is somewhere that makes or uses carbon , and your looking at the stuff that was going in the bin before his car boot got it.