If you are a DIY person and love making things with your own hands, you will find this information very helpful for building your own plasma cutter.
Table of Contents
Use of Plasma Cutters
Plasma cutters are useful for multiple purposes; mainly, they are used to cut different conductive metals, including copper and aluminum.
You will find plasma cutter being used at automobile workshops, scrapping operations, industries, and even some people keep the plasma cutter in their garage to use it as a repairing tool.
- Benefits of Plasma Cutting
Plasma cutting uses the electrically conductive gas to cut through the metals by means of an accelerated small nozzle. Plasma cutting is a preferred method for cutting different metals as it offers high precision and quality with greater speed.
With the help of a plasma cutter, you can easily cut a batch of multiple plates without any hassle. In addition, the plasma cutting technique is economical, user, and environmentally friendly, and is energy efficient. Plus, it generates less slag as compared to other techniques.
Making a Plasma Cutter is Easy or Not?
If you are fond of making machinery and are familiar with different tools and equipment, in that case, you can easily make your own plasma cutter; however, if you are not familiar with the terms and the parts which are required to build the plasma cutter, the process of making it will be quite difficult for you but here in this article we tried our best to keep it as simple as we can.
When using the plasma cutter, you should never forget the safety gears and should follow the proper rules and procedures.
If not used properly or without wearing the safety equipment, it can lead to a severe injury. Recommended safety gears which should be used at any cost are welding helmet, gloves, jacket, and work boots.
When making a plasma cutter, you don’t need to wear a helmet, but gloves would be necessary as you are going to deal with electricity.
Preparation
- Analyze your requirement
Before starting the building process, you should analyze that for what purpose you are going to use it for; if you are going to use it at your or garage for repairs, then a simple plasma cutter would be enough for you, and if you are going to use it for construction or industrial purpose, you will definitely need heave tools and parts and in-depth knowledge with a little bit of experience.
Here we will proceed with the simpler one so that you don’t have to spend your money on it for using it at your home and garage.
- Gather required tools and equipment
For gathering the essential parts, you have two alternatives. The first is that you purchase all parts and components from the market, and the second option is that you look for the parts around you, check if you have any old water heaters, air conditioners, microwaves, and other electrical machinery; from there, you can find most of the parts required for building the plasma cutter.
Listing down the item is always a good idea so that you can easily figure out the items you didn’t have. Mainly you will need to have a power source, capacitors, auto relays, plasma head, heater elements, work clamps, bridge rectifier, auto coil, some wires, air filter, regulator, and multifarious connectors and terminal ends.
Assembling
Once you have gathered the part and equipment which are required, you should not make a layout design or a diagram illustrating the schematic arrangements of parts, wires, and all other settings of the plasma cutter.
By doing this, you will have an idea and better understanding, which will directly help you to build this plasma cutter in time.
- Planning and Mapping out
Designing a circuit will also help you in making amendments and rectification of faults before actually making a product.
You should take as much time in designing as you want because if it is done correctly, you can build your own plasma cutter very easily.
Implementation Phase
By now, you must have circuitry and design in your hand; now, all you need is to connect the elements in a proper way. Having a table, board, or a wooden piece will help. The first thing to arrange is the power source.
For this, you need to have a step-down transformer and contactor that you can wire it so that it can be turned on when required. For a mini plasma cutter, a battery can be used as a power source.
The next step is to connect capacitors, rectifiers, and a reed switch to control the high DC current flow in a circuit. Automotive relays are linked to control low voltage and current. Wire all components carefully and arrange them in order so that the circuit does not give an unwieldy look.
Just as you have done with joining the parts and elements, you can connect the air tank hose. In the end, you can connect the board terminals with the transformer and main power switch.
At last, you need to test it and check for any errors in operation. After you are done with the testing and resolving the errors, you should enclose it with a case in order to use it for future use.
In the end, always remember that you are not going to make a perfect plasma cutter on the first try, so you should not lose hope and keeps practicing it; eventually, you will make the perfect plasma cutter with your own hands.