[TheForge] New Toy

[ries]

Well, I dont have a PlasmaCam- they are a bit to rickety and light  
weight for me- but I have been running a bigger, more industrial  
version since I bought my C&G machine in 1992.
I have made a LOT of money with that machine over the years.
Mine is 4' x 8', but I have cut bigger stuff with it by doing it in  
sections.
For several large projects, I have cut 4' x 8' panels of 3/16" into  
perforated screens.
I dont think that little plasma cam table could even support a sheet  
that heavy.

For at least ten years, from roughly 88 to 98, I did a line of  
candlesticks, tables, chairs, bowls, lamps, and other small metalwork  
with lots of plasma cut parts- stuff that would have taken years to  
chisel cut- I probably cut out, and sold, something like 2000 of my  
gecko soapdish alone. Over 150 different designs of chairs with the  
backs and seats plasma cut.

Its just a tool, like any other- if you are a good designer and  
tooluser, you can get good work from one. If your ideas are thin, and  
your skills weak, you can indeed just cut out cowboy shapes and weld  
horseshoes on em for coat racks, I suppose.

I dont do production work anymore, so my machine sits idle many days,  
but we often use it to cut custom parts for big projects these days,  
from a onesie to 100.
It is faster, more accurate, and just plain easier to be able to do  
that kind of stuff inhouse, while you wait.

I do occassionally send out waterjet cutting- usually only for  
stainless steel parts that need very fine details, or for parts  
thicker than my machine will handle- ( thicker than 1/2" plate). I  
find waterjet to be very nice, but quite expensive. They usually need  
to charge for programming on complicated shapes, and then they charge  
by the inch, with slower speeds and better edge quality costing more  
than fast, rough stuff.
I just wrote a check for ten grand to my waterjet cutting shop- for  
several hundred precision pieces of 1/2" and 3/4" plate, ranging up to  
40" in diameter, with hundreds of matching holes- which would have  
been very hard to do accurately with my plasma machine.
So waterjet definitely has its place as well.
ries


Ries Niemi
Industrial Artist
http://www.riesniemi.com/