First cuts

Finally the snow from that freak snow storm that passed 2 days ago has melted from on top of the steel sitting in my driveway.  It was actually quite a nice day when the sun was out, hovering at around 10, so I took advantage of this to chop up these steel plates.  I have a 325lb 1/4" x 48" x 96" plate and a 200lb 1/8" x 48" x 120" plate (or sheet?)... plus a sheet of expanded metal.. that grate stuff you see on metal walkways.. and some 28' of angle iron... lots of raw material.. figure I'll draw this out so I can do the least number of cuts and waste the least amount of steel, because I have a few other projects I want to use this steel for.

I picked up a cheap, made in China, 3-in-1 welder/plasma cutter a few months ago, and although I've cut and welded up a few small things, this will be the first big test for this machine.  To be honest, I'm a little nervous.  I can always resort to using the angle grinder with cut off wheels, but that's going to be really long and noisy and dusty and crappy!  So here's my setup.. got the tig/arc/plasma machine on the right, some compressed air for plasma cutting next to that and a tank of argon for the tig on the left...

I didn't get any footage of the actual cutting, but I promise I'll get some when I'm cutting the individual pieces.  The goal for today was to just get these huge sheets broken down a little so I can fit them in the garage.

We (my father in law and I) got off to a little of a rocky start with some electrical problems.  This machine supports both 110V and 220V, and like I said I haven't done any long cuts like this, so I've been using 110V since I bought it.. mainly because I don't have 220V run into the garage. So I started the cuts today while plugged to 110V.  This lasted all of 15 seconds and the breaker tripped.  So I decided to hook up my make-shift 30 amp 220V extension cord to the dryer outlet in the basement.  Ahhhh, much better!

So I had 3 x 4' cuts on the 1/8" and 3 x 4' cuts on the 1/4".  The 1/8" was on top, so I tackled this one first.  I clamped on some of the angle iron I had to act as a guide, and after about the first 5 or 6 inches I found a nice groove and started making some pretty nice and clean cuts.  And once the 1/8" was banged out, I went to check on my chicken that I'm smoking up today in my old smoker...

Looking good!

So, now the 1/4".  I knew this was going to be a completely different ball game.. I'm going to have to travel slower, the torch movement is going to have to be smoother, and have to turn the amps up on the plasma cutter.  And then is started to rain!  Crap!  Pack everything into the garage quick!  And then as soon as it started, it's over.  Quick, take everything back out of the garage again.

Okay, 1/4".. after a couple of tweeks on my technique, we're cooking.. with plasma!  I got 2 pieces of plate chopped up into manageable pieces, basically so I can get it stacked nicely inside the garage and I'm going to call it a day!  Hope you enjoyed the read.

Ohhh, and the chicken was great!