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Ruuman

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  1. I have a tigershark on my 130, I got it out the work skip! The winch overall is pretty good, I'd say the same as all the chinese ones and it had an albright in the control box. Only thing that let it down was the wander lead and most importantly the socket. It ruins a perfectly good winch. The pins are tiny and bend and the socket was very badly soldered together (this was the reason it was in the skip) I wired it up to a switch in the cab bypassing the socket and it's been rock solid. For a general recovery winch it's perfect, you won't win any competitions, but for a bit of general use and green laning it would be fine.
  2. If it was me, I'd be seriously thinking about what cummins are about to start offering https://cumminsengines.com/repower nice modern 2.8L 4 cylinder turbo diesel, 160hp and 267ft torque @ 1600rpm I hope we will be able to get it in the UK.
  3. Lots of interesting things added to the post, unfortunately my progresses isn't great, I have basically dragged the plasma out of the truck, finally bolted the wheels on and connected everything up. Quality looks good and everything is nice and solid. Switches and dials clunk and click like you would think they should and the power control has a nice bit of resistance to it. Both cables were good and the -3 temps didn't effect the flex. It came with a handful of torch spares, some sort of pokey tool, the plug for the CNC socket, CNC diagram and manual. Couple of pics inside, it all looks pretty good to me Front Back Torch (seems nice) Circuit diagram for the CNC control Now the big problem occurred, I charged down to screwfix to grab some 32amp commando plugs knowing I wouldn't have time to wire up a new circuit I thought screw it I can give it a go in the 16amp, the 32amp plug looks the same, with hindsight this was obviously not going to be the case! but I was in a hurry! So for future reference to any other idiots out there, 32amp on the left, 16amp on the right, quite a size difference! So long story short, no progress has been made
  4. Cheers for the info Rob, hopefully have a chance to play this weekend. The plasma has arrived and it looks like a great piece of kit. I will do a bit of a review when I get a chance. just wish there were more hours in the day!
  5. Cheers Mickey, Getting there slowly! obviously once up and running let me know if you need anything cut. I'm happy with that, I don't want to weld up that much fencing ever again!
  6. Now that is a bloody good idea! I think it would do gasket paper no problem. Ill see if we have any neoprene gasket material at work too. That would be really good!
  7. Ahh ok, I think thats a similar theory to the post I included, they were using M10 and M11 which is the vacuum control as best I can tell. As I say I'm very new to g-code so still trying to get my head round the finer control aspects. I assume I either need to mod the post processor or adjust the port configs in Mach 3 or both to get this to work. Still will keep me busy in the evening and I've moved the fan heater to the shed now so can't complain! I'll do a write up on it when it arrives they seem pretty new on the market, but from what I've read everyone is impressed and they were great to deal with. I need to also wire a 32amp circuit into the shed
  8. Well a bit more messing around and learning. I've just been experimenting with the raster mode, which basically turns the CNC table into an old dot matrix style printer. The process to create the data file is a bit more complex than straight CNC dxf's, but not to bad. Basically you need to find an image you think might work, simplify it and convert it to a vector graphic (i used inkscape for this whole process) you need to use the SVG file format to import into sheetcam and then handle it like a normal file, but under tools there is a raster option. Now the issue I have found is there is a 100ms delay from the torch control turning on until the next line of G-code being executed and this seems to be hardcoded into mach 3. This causes hotspots at the start of each line and each break of the line, this is fine when trying to cut something, but really causes issues on marking. There is apparently a work around mentioned here: http://hobbycncart.com/publ/cikkek/mach3_temaju_cikkek/switching_a_laser_under_mach_control/8-1-0-29 but I haven't got my head round it yet as I'm pretty new to g-code. In this case it has had the unfortunate effect of burning through the back of the nice notepad my girlfriend bought me for Christmas, but I kind of still like the result. Another useful finding is that using the height adjustment the kerf width can be accurately controlled. So you can setup different tools in sheetcam with different heights and feed rates to achieve the same burn level but with a different kerf. If the 100ms delay issue wasn't there it would work perfectly!
  9. Hi Simon, The laser is pretty smart, it doesn't have much cutting power, from my experiments so far 10mm foam rubber take approx 6sec to punch a hole 3mm abs plastic (black) took 3-4second to punch a hole (my god it stinks) I think thin stuff it probably would cut, but very slowly. thin cereal box card cuts at about 200mm/min maybe a bit less I'm going to see if it will burn off engineering blue or sharpie from metal, could be really handy for laying out projects before milling. I just purchased the full version of sheetcam and paid the extra 25 quid for the laser raster module. It's running a wood etch at the moment, looking forward to the result, though it needs some more tweaking. Thats a great idea with the foil, but I'm going to rig up some fume extraction before I even get close to attempting that! just for reference this is a demo of the oxford cutmaster I'm getting, I'm wondering if the thermal heating mode might have some interesting possibilities too.
  10. Right, well I haven't got the plasma yet as I've been off sick, but the little laser turned up and it's pretty cool. The controller board relay can switch up to 20amps @ 14v and the laser only needs 2.5amp @ 12v so it was easy to wire straight in. A couple of table ties to secure. After a bit of messing about I found you could get significantly different kerfs with the focusing ring. Just a word of warning if you get one of these, get some laser safety glasses. The light is ridiculous and a stray reflection will do serious sight damage, the glasses are very cheap. I found on the ply I was marking the 650mm per minute travel speed was the quickest it would go and still maintain a good result. Video demo is here: Plasma should be here next week!
  11. Right decision made and money put down. I've ordered an Oxford Cutmaster 550, they are customising it with a torch connection and CNC control port. I've stuck with a hand torch for the second but can have a machine torch later. Hopefully should arrive next week sometime, I've also purchased a 2.5w laser. Annoyingly the next 3 weekends are already fully booked
  12. Cheers! I'm too hungover to go outside and play so I thought this would be a bit more useful! :-)
  13. So now onto the question, I have the funds for a new plasma and want to get something good. so the short list is: Oxford Cutmaster 550 http://www.migtigarc.co.uk/oxford-cutmaker-550-plasma-cutter-403-p.asp Tec-Arc Opticut 65 http://www.migtigarc.co.uk/tecarc-opticut-65-plasma-cutter-397-p.asp Hypertherm 45XP http://www.rapidwelding.com/dynamic/Category.aspx?c=APMX45XPHS&o=0&zl=0 Now I'm leaning toward the oxford and tec arcs, British made (same company) and I've been very pleased with my oxford mig, lower cost and the cutting performance is massive, not that I'll ever need to cut 30mm I'm going to stick to a hand torch for the second though a proper machine torch will be on the cards if all goes well. The tec arc they will customise with CNC port and possibly add a torch connection that would be handy if I want to do some hand cutting and don't have to remove the torch off the machine. So hopefully on the 3rd/4th I will be putting an order down for something and the project can continue. I'm also very tempted to mount a laser on it for messing about, you seem to be able to get a 2.5w laser for about 80 quid on ebay and it looks to cut thin wood ok and quite good at engraving things. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/445nm-450nm-2500mW-2-5W-Blue-Laser-Module-for-DIY-CNC-Cutter-Engraving-Engraver-/172420215653?hash=item28250bb365:g:YgAAAOSwWTRWz~1I could be fun
  14. So that brings us to today, finally a bit of time off over Christmas, a little older, probably not much wiser I decided to dig the table out again but with some changes. Now I've decide I don't want to have the table stored away, it wants a permanent home to live as it will motivate me to use it more. So the plan was now to reduce the size down to a 2x4 table, the reality of the situation being I could probably get away with a 2x2 table for almost every project I do, but I had the space available so why not. After clearing and moving the mountain of junk out of the shed I manage to get to the desk and decided this will be the perfect base. Shortening the table was very simple and just required cutting down the box section down, shortening the threaded bar clamping rods and cutting the belts down. I added some risers to lift up the table up off the desk as I plan on having a water bed slid under. I will also be adding some metal to the floor and walls of the shed to keep the fire risk down. I also wired in the floating head limit switch but still getting my head round the code to make this work properly.
  15. So with the table all built up and working it was time to rig up the plasma, this is where things started going wrong and why the project was shelved until funds and time allowed for it to be completed. So I rigged the plasma torch up with cable ties so I could get things ready to test, later on I planned to make a more substantial torch holder. I then added two wires from the torch switch to wire into the controller board, all pretty straight forward. The major issue is the plasma I was using only had HF arc start, not a pilot arc. Every time the arch struck and it wasn't a perfect strike the electromagnetic interference drove the controller nuts and would either lock the axis or introduce a vibration in the motors and would only respond if it was powered off and on again. It was so bad the board actually died on the z axis and I had to buy a replacement (luckily very cheap) Now the wiring I was using was quite poor and I could have done some better grounding and isolation to try and improve things, but on further reading up on the net it turned out this was a very common issue. After a bit of messing around I realised I really need a better plasma and while I'm not knocking the r-tech (for what it is, it's pretty good and well made). So after looking at the piggy bank fund there was no chance I could afford something like a hypertherm or even the r-tech 50. So after tripping over the table god knows how many times I decided to shelve it and come back. On the plus side breaking the table down into sections was very quick and it packed away nicely.
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