• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

13A Plasma Cutter

C

Chris152

Sapling
Joined
May 2, 2021
Messages
412
Reaction score
38
We're looking to get one that works properly on a regular domestic supply. This one looks good (John 'doubleboost's' review)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Vf5QORwcnU
but not cheap at £500+, plus the air compressor. Are there others that would work unproblematically on 13A plug that cost less or are better for the same money? I've searched but not found. Just checking before I hit 'Buy' on the R-Tech.
Thanks for any thoughts,
Chris
 
Chris152":vacduf4k said:
We're looking to get one that works properly on a regular domestic supply. This one looks good (John 'doubleboost's' review)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Vf5QORwcnU
but not cheap at £500+, plus the air compressor. Are there others that would work unproblematically on 13A plug that cost less or are better for the same money? I've searched but not found. Just checking before I hit 'Buy' on the R-Tech.
Thanks for any thoughts,
Chris
Click to expand...

A few thoughts:

  1. Don't pay full price for anything from R-Tech. They often do discounts (if you ask John aka doubleboost nicely, he'll probably give you a code).
  2. R-Tech customer support really is second-to-none, they're a company I'd recommend buying from (that's where my TIG welder came from).
  3. Having said all that, do you need a plasma cutter enough to justify the £500-ish cost? Will you use it enough. I bought a much, much cheaper one and it doesn't get much use (in fact I might be open to selling it if I can face digging it out of the shed). For straight cuts in sheet material, I far prefer my metal-cutting circular saw.
  4. Think about how thick the material you want to cut, how often and how much you want to spend. There's a range of "budget" plasma cutters on ebay called CUTxx or CUTxxP where XX is the alleged current capability and the presence or otherwise of P says whether it has "pilot arc" (for ease of starting) or not. CUT40s would run on a 13 A plug okay. The others would too, but perhaps not if you turned them up to 11.
  5. Mine is a CUT60P (this photo link might work?). The current ratings are optimistic! I run mine off a 16 A single phase socket because I have one, but I've used it on a 13 A to 16 A adaptor cable and the fuse didn't blow, so it'd probably fine on a 13 A plug for most uses!
  6. For most sensible uses on steel (not aluminium), you'd probably be fine with a CUT40, which are much cheaper than what I paid for mine (a bit over £200 I think).
  7. Lidl periodically do plasma cutters and they're quite well thought of for hobbyists (on a par with the CUT40 or CUT50 I think). Some of them even have built-in compressors. They sell out very quickly!

... and one final thought (and probably the most important one). Sign up to the MIG welding forum. There are lots of people on there who have plasma cutters (posh ones, CUTxx ones and Lidl ones), so you'll get lots of good advice.
 
Thanks for the reply, Al. The cutter will be for car panels essentially, so only about 1mm (sometimes 2mm) thickness - I made the decision yesterday after watching my lad reach with an angle grinder into really awkward places and corners, trying to cut panels out - the torch on a plasma cutter is way more compact/ agile and seems to make far less noise!
Reading around the net, it's apparent that a fair few of the cutters (including the Lidl one) can sometimes cause all kind of interference (which I don't understand) due to power demands, and the R-Tech clearly states that it works fine off a regular domestic supply, and of course gets that review from John doubleboost.
I checked 'Cut40' on ebay etc, it seems to be a category produced by different manufacturers/ sellers with widely varying prices? As I wrote before, I don't mind paying the extra for a decent bit of kit, it will get used well into the future, but obviously don't want to throw money away if it's not necessary! Next up will be a quiet air compressor... :)

IMG_20230524_081637.jpg
 
Whereabouts are you based? If somewhere not too far from Gloucestershire, you'd be welcome to have a play with mine and see what you think.
 
OK, I think me might have a plan. Metabo do a one-hand reciprocating saw that uses the battery we already have, only 13mm travel of blade (so hopefully ok for thin sheet metal), and good quality at a decent price. Until we know what cutter/ air compressor we need (for the cutter but also for spraying and possibly blasting in future), we'd use that. Having a look at your cutter would be great, Al - we're about 15 miles west of Cardiff and head your way often enough - when the time comes, I'll be in touch to see if it suits you? It's very kind of you to offer, and it'd be great to see your setup there.

Let me know if my thinking is flawed/ a reciprocating saw is not a good idea?!
 
+1 for nibblers rather than reciprocating saws. Reciprocating saws are pretty aggressive in my experience and can be quite hard to control. If you get a nibbler, make sure you use it in a clear area that's easy to tidy up: they make lots of tiny little curly sharp offcuts that will get everywhere. Metal shears are also a good option (it looks like Metabo do one of those too). This article compares the two types of cutter.

If/when you pop round, I can show you my metal-cutting circular saw as well. That's much nicer to use than any of the above (but only for straight cuts, obviously).
 
We've got a cheap nibbler attachment for a regular drill, I'd forgotten it was there tbh. I just had a go with it, and it cuts well through 1mm steel but won't fit over the 'MoT welding' we seem to be dealing with a lot. (I didn't realise MoT welding was a thing til recently - seems to be a euphemism for 'bodge welding to get it through the MoT', resulting in patches welded on top of patches and rot.)

IMG_20230525_095112.jpg

This is the bottom of the footwell, with the foot rest thing. (I also had a go with the hand shears, which is hard going.) I guess a dedicated nibbler would fit much more readily into spaces (our drill is far from compact) but might still struggle to cut through the double layers of metal, I guess about 20mm thick.
The Metabo nibbler/ shears look great but pricey, getting on toward the cost of the plasma cutter.

We're going to have a play today to see how far we get with our nibbler and hand shears, and will report back in due course.
Many thanks both for your thoughts.
 
Just a quick update - I couldn't watch the lad in confined spaces with his head so close to the grinder any more, so as an interim I bought this:
https://www.kelvinpowertools.com/metabo ... 11-p-11694
along with 150mm, 24 tpi blades. It works a treat, easy one-handed operation, pretty much glides through car body panel and with fine tpi, no catches. Between that, the grinder and the nibbler attachment, I feel much happier til we've had time to build up to a plasma cutter.
Thanks Al and Steve, hopefully see you before too long, Al.
 
Quick update - a couple of weeks ago we bought the Parkside plasma cutter (the one without compressor built-in) and it works a treat for what we need. After a quick practice, the lad used it to remove a damaged chassis component that couldn't easily be accessed with a grinder or saw. A fairly tidy cut, ready to be cleaned up for the repair section. Definitely worth £120, to us.

IMG_20241030_075639_edit_34518819613480.jpg
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top