Plasma cutting machine

Plasma cutting machines, plasma cutting equipment

Plasma cutting machines for fast and clean cutting of sheets and steel plates with medium wall thickness.

The portal type plasma cutting machines are used in steel construction, steel trade, plant engineering and metal construction for thermal cutting with a plasma cutting source of flat steel and steel plates.

The plasma cutting system is particularly economical for cutting sheets and profiles with wall thicknesses ranging from 3 mm up to 80 mm.
The plasma cutting systems are supplied by manufacturers such as Kjellberg® and Hypertherm® to the internationally known machine manufacturers and integrated by them into the flame cutting systems.
The most sold plasma cutting sources in our field are from the two manufacturer brands Hypertherm or Kjellberg. Of course, the laser and plasma sources are becoming cheaper and more effective, and therefore achieve higher and higher accuracies and cutting speeds. Therefore, in the future, thicker materials will also be economically separable with a plasma torch.

Plasma cutting machine or plasma cutting system

If the material thickness to be cut is in the majority larger than 3 mm and smaller than 80 mm sheet thickness, a plasma cutting is used depending on the availability of the machine equipment. Plasma cutting machines are significantly faster than oxyfuel cutting and, with modern cutting sources from Kjellberg® and Hypertherm®, accurate down to 80 mm sheet thickness and economical for many oxyfuel cutting operations. However, accurate plasma cutting can only be achieved if the machine also has precise guidance of the gantry and torch unit. Also very important is a stable machine cutting table in conjunction with a suitable extraction table and an efficient filter system. The filtration system must be able to precisely extract and filter the toxic fumes and dust.

Plasma cutting

Plasma cutting is a fast thermal cutting process that is becoming increasingly important in the steel industry and is replacing oxyfuel cutting. In plasma cutting, a plasma jet of up to 30,000 degrees is generated at the cutting nozzle. With this high-energy plasma jet, the metal plates are cut at a high cutting speed. This allows modern plasma sources to achieve much higher cutting speeds than with oxyfuel cutting. Up to a material thickness of 60 mm (soon up to 80 mm) a higher cutting speed is achieved with mild steel (and other conductive materials) than with oxyfuel cutting. When purchasing a new machine, most machine users are increasingly opting for plasma cutting technology. This high-speed plasma cutting technology is therefore used on gantry cutting machines, sheet metal working centers, drilling torch systems, notching systems and pipe cutting machines.

By using modern plasma cutting sources from manufacturers such as Kjellberg® with the HiFocus system and Hypertherm® with the HyDefinition system, much better cutting qualities are achieved even with thicker material. Plasma cutting systems are available from 100 Amp. to 400 Amp. Power. If the plasma cutting systems are additionally equipped with True Hole or Contour Cut technology, the course of the plasma cut is only slight. Hole quality and angular accuracy have been improved many times over.

The choice of gas depends on the component material to be processed. When processing mild steel, aluminum and stainless steel, it is possible to use inexpensive compressed air as the plasma gas. In order to achieve a higher cutting quality, the gases nitrogen or a mixture of argon and hydrogen are also used for plasma cutting of aluminum or stainless steel.
In steel construction, however, the use of oxygen is widespread, even though the service life of wear parts such as cutting nozzles is reduced. In return, however, the cutting speed increases and the quality of the plasma cut is improved. The slag burr is reduced and thus the time-consuming deburring process.

Plasma cutting equipment manufacturers

Well-known manufacturers of plasma cutting machines with extensive equipment include Messer Cutting, ESAB, Ficep, Zinser, Voortman, Microstep, Sato, mgm, Warcom, Becky, etc.

Used plasma cutting machines and plasma cutting equipment

Nenok has constantly used plasma cutting machines of different manufacturers in good condition. Combined cutting machines with a drilling unit are also available; these are equipped with both one or more oxyfuel torches and plasma cutting systems.

Video of a used plasma cutting machine type OmniMat® L5200 from Messer Cutting Systems with 2 Hypertherm plasma cutting torches