Thread: Plasma foot in mouth time

Good on you Grahame . I wonder how much the Fronius water cost(probably more than Perrier) and what's so different about it.

Mick

Probably just the purity - imagine how fast the thing would gunk up vapourising then depositing impurities out of the plasma stream!

Well done Grahame.


I'm guessing fronius water is a by-product left after they crush all the froniuses.

Well done Grahame.

It takes a bigger man to know when hes wrong and admit so.

Al

Originally Posted by ozwinner

Well done Grahame.

It takes a bigger man to know when hes wrong and admit so.

Al

Well said Al and Well done Grahame

I was trying all day to work out how to say that....

Cheers

Jeremy

Thanks Grahame,
Hadn't heard of it, and as I'm pretty well satisfied with a cheap Italian plasma cutter, I don't think I'll be looking further into it! Anyway, we won't be needing any of that 'specially pure water brought here to Toowoomba, we'll have our own!!
And as for thinking you know it all...well, we all sometimes get like that about certain things, but the world (and the Web) is a big place. And its full of wierd and wonderful stuff.

Cheers,

I realise that there would n't be anybody here that would seriously consider one of those rigs.

Of course they are not aimed at our level but at the contractor who is now equipped to work on site unencumbered by a compressor or gas cylinders. The price to them for what they can achieve is reasonable.

Bear in mind though that this company has quite a history in the development of high tech electronic goodies.

Fronius were the ones that developed the inverter technologyfor the solar electricity panels. From there they went to welders. It is companies like this that we should thank as they have brought this type of gear within economic reach of some DIY people and made the skill of welding just that bit easier for them to pick up.
I remember bagging inverters as just another toy ,but I can admit to being wrong after i used one for a while.

Of course the price it what we consider steep, but can you see the copy cat manufacturers involved at that level.
Nope! but they are happy to take your dollars and build a poor copy that may not last and certainly won't be serviced or easily repaired.

All those offended please form a line to the left.

heers
Grahame

Originally Posted by Grahame Collins

All those offended please form a line to the left.

heers
Grahame

Your left or ours?

Al

But your'e a right wing communist or something aren't you Al? You have two faces and not a leg to stand on.

Sorry guys
I am a curmudgeon on Thursday arvos.Its 10 shop B metal work in the last lesson at school = a bad combination.

As usual most of them decided it was a good time to be naughty. One of them attempted to climb into a cupboard.
It took every bit of my integrity not to push him in,snap the lock and walk off and flush the key down the sewer.

Hence I come home like a bear with a bad headache and this attitude had found its way into my post.

Its hard to describe to those who don't have to experience these buggers, but blokes like Woodbutcher will know of what I speak.

Left wing he says ! No way its that bit left over from being a boilermaker that likes an argument.

Grumpy Grahame

Originally Posted by Grahame Collins

Hi Guys
Prior to Christmas, I got stuck into 2shane who attempted to hijack a thread about plasma cutters. 2shane mentioned in his post how he was designing a plasma using steam. All my training told me he was wrong and I told him so.


Wooops!!! I now find out That Fronius company has now produced a plasma cutter unit that operates with water. No compressed air or gas , but just water.

A catch? Of course there is! The water is special Fronius water, which apparently lasts a month. The unit is 240 volt
and highly portable.The blurb says they it cut through 12mm stainless.Thats impressive.

Before you all line for one, you need to save a bit, well a lot really about $5000 or so.

Somehow I don't think I owe 2shane an apology because the unit was on the market 12 months ago and I reckon thats where he got his "idea" from.
I do apologize to the rest of you though, for letting myself think I knew it all.You never do. Life is like that.

Humbly yours
Grahame

My idea about feeding steam under pressure to a plasma torch was based upon several things.

1. Water is cheap.

2. A little bit makes an awful lot of "water gas".

3. I like designing and creating really neato stuff from scratch.

4. I couldn't see the point in paying big $$$$$ for Argon, Nitrogen or Helium... as a plasma gas.

5. I knew that wet steam (virtually pure water) ought to be able to be induced to create a plasma, with the most elementary of electrics and igniters.

5a. I also figured that a wet head or a cleverly designed copper head, ought to be able to use a pre heater to generat the steam and then switch to the heat of the arc to continue to supply the steam (or mostly so)

6. I want to cut profiles into pipes, and I didn't want to spend an awful lot of money to do it.

7. I know that I can design a sufficiently good and reliable electronic drive, igniter and cutting torch to satisfy my needs.

8. And without getting into all sorts of calculations and variables etc.. water / steam has a very high latent heat, and when the dissociation process reverses, as the plasma cuts the metal, the atoms recombine, and the idea followed that the oxygen would add to the heat of the cut and increase the available depth of cut and the cutting speed.

So all up, MY idea was a pretty good one. (although as it turns out, I am also not the first to think of a lot of things)


However Graham.

The problem with judemental or people who love to offer unqualified opinions is that:

a) Thier brains and mouth tend to run away without checking any of the facts;

b) Most of them are qualified on the merrits of life experience or tertiary study, to have opinions about things they have never done.

c) Nearly all of my ideas are just that - my ideas.

d) Nearly everything I think up and then manufacture, works with the utmost excellence.

e) Graham, based upon both what you have said and how you said it, you don't appear to know about plasma nor how to generate it - I do.

And

f) After I had thought up the idea, I went and cross referenced it with the real world and found out that yes steam can be forced into the plasma state and used as a cutting medium,

g) There are some known problems with it (from memory) by the dissociated oxygen reacting with the tungsten electrode. (or was it wet steam and the entrained water droplets)

h) This problem also occours in cutters that use air for thier plasma gas, when moisture comes through the torch.

i) This the very reason why steam is NOT used as a plasma cutting gas - and the information about it is very scarce.

j) Tho the issue of water injected plasma cutting heads, is a commercial reality.

k) And this is completely different to using steam as THE cutting gas.


Steam plasma guns are used for many things...

google: steam plasma gas

and

google: steam plasma "cutting gas"

azom.com/details.asp?ArticleID=1061

http://www.sppusa.com/reference/white_paper/wp_pc.html

http://www.iupac.org/publications/pac/2002/pdf/7403x0429.pdf



And while you can gloat all you want, at your "successful" ? slagging me off behind my back antics, it appears to me that your unqualified in terms schooling and life experience to have any opinion on the subject of plasma cutters or what I had to offer on the subject.

I don't particularly feel the need to express opinions about things I know nothing about and I neither feel the need to prove I am right, nor other people wrong.

The reason why I refuse to run around expressing unqualifed opinions, and then presenting them as expert material evidence is that it would give other people the impression that I am an idiot with a big mouth and an inferority complex.

And what you do with your attitude is your problem.

Originally Posted by 2shane

.................The reason why I refuse to run around expressing unqualifed opinions, and then presenting them as expert material evidence is that it would give other people the impression that I am an idiot with a big mouth and an inferority complex.................

Shane,
you don't neccesarily need to run around expressing unqualified opinions to give other people the impression that you are an idiot with a big mouth and an inferority complex.

Mick

Thanks for your response, 2shane.

Geez 2 shane, Grahame did apologise. Give it up