[JUDGE3]

My plasma cutter has been my least used tool. having some fun with it now that I have the time, learned how best to use it and really glad I have it.

cut out an 8' tall sasquatch out of .070 steel and mounted it today. once rust does its thing it will have the right look. as a car nut, this is one of the few things I need to rust. ha

also have 3 easter island heads out there in the woods. my wife puts on a halloween spook path for all the kids every year. the heads are glow in the dark paint, a solar black light really makes em erie at night. darn pics are sideways no idea why.

[misterp266]

Nice job!

[242177P]

Can make ghosts with chicken wire

[dataway]

Jeez, love that stuff. Local guy has a bear silhouette in his yard, my dog scrutinizes it very carefully every time I drive by. That ghost is excellent, never see that before.

Plasma cutters are a strange tool, don't use mine much, but when I do it's usually a LOT of cutting. However not fond at all of the oxide edge it leaves on the metal, very hard and has to be ground off before you can do any drilling or machining on it.

[Radman]

I am having a party, that will be target shooting after we eat. I am trying to make up a cardboard covered with fur bigfoot. I want to rig it up with fishing line to the trees just inside of the woods line. The plan is fixing it so that it will move with the tree branches. If I get it right, I bet it will have a few holes in it after the party.

[stuta]

That's awesome...Sounds like a good time!

[salem1912]

I am liking the left-over cut out piece too!
Photo 1.

[JUDGE3]

Yeh I purchased the plasma cutter planning to use it on my rust repairs on my Firebird. practiced on an old fender and quickly found out the carbon edge it leaves requires to much grinding. cuts quick etc but leaves behind work, so went back to the cutting wheel for all of it.

maybe my cutter is a cheapie and high end ones don't do that?

but....in making sasquatch I was happy to have found a perfect use for it. the .070 steel with the cutter on the lowest setting (20 amps) I did not grind on it at all. it left a small carbon edge. I think using it at the right speed and technique/setting greatly reduces that edge. on stuff like this the edge was actually good, its not sharp and it gives it kinda a neat look.

its fun to use. grey alien, oversized critters are next.

i'm very lucky to have a steel salvage yard just 3 miles from me. going there is the same feeling for me as going to an old muscle car salvage yard!

[MidnightAuto]

So cool. I don’t live in the country with property but would love to drop a couple bigfoots around the neighborhood covertly. But there is this from my hometown

http://miamibeach411.com/news/piano-island

[JUDGE3]

Originally Posted by MidnightAuto

So cool. I don’t live in the country with property but would love to drop a couple bigfoots around the neighborhood covertly. But there is this from my hometown

http://miamibeach411.com/news/piano-island

so funny you say that, I traced out 4 more on wood to do just that!

wondering if traffic will come by on my dirt road for the "sightings" lol, and if the mailbox bashing kool-aid sippin high schoolers will steal my sasquatch ha. if they do I will just laugh because it will likely wind up on the schools front entrance or something.

[Sirrotica]

Having run a flame burning machine in a factory setting, when I just out of high school, then moving on to a small local steel supplier that cut steel for sale to customers I got an education from an older gentleman that had been doing it for a good many years.

In the factory setting I was taught to use the highest pre heat flame I could get. That was piece work, and It produced a lot of slag on the finished parts. Then the finished parts had a whole lot of grinding to do.

Using high pre heat flame also rounded the top edge of the part The older guy schooled me that if you used a lower pre heat flame it made no where as much slag, plus it doesn't round the top edge over. So I also carry that over using my plasma cutter, lower amperage on the plasma cutter makes much less slag to grind off, and doesn't tend to round over the upper edge of the cut. It takes a little longer, but cut quality of the part is much better. Just something I leaned many years ago from an old timer, now I'm the old timer, so I need to pass that info on to others.

When cutting with a torch, or a plasma cutter, I try to only use as much heat as I need to make the cut, much less clean up later on.

[dataway]

My machine is a nice Miller, but I gotta admit the vast majority of time I take it out it's to save time, so I crank it up and slice away ... which is probably why the edge is less than desirable And the quality of the metal being cut did seem to have quite an impact. Clean cold rolled cut a lot nicer than than rusty hot rolled.