Welding Tips and Tricks

I was curious, does it work if i want to plasma cut two identical pieces to clamp them together and adjust the settings accordingly for thicker material? or would its pretty much seam weld them together.

I dont think it would work, the cutting would stop at the second sheet and just make a mess of it.

It can be done, but you need to leave a large "grind" margin.

All in all, it's a bad idea.

Steve S

Bad idea? Why would you say that? Plasma cutting works great for cutting multiple layers and is not affected by the separation between the pieces like oxy-fuel cutting would be. Give it a try!

Yep.

Give it a try.

Any opening between the layers, as may be induced by heat, causes the layers farther from the torch to suffer inaccuracies not seen in the top piece.

The variation may be minor, but a grind allowance must be provided for, in all layers, including the first.

Steve S

give it a try on scrap metal

What have you got to lose

Good Luck

John

Yes it works great, did it many times making shims.

I have stacked 3/16 flat bar and stainless, not sure how good aluminum would work

Give er a try

John

welder4956 wrote:Bad idea? Why would you say that? Plasma cutting works great for cutting multiple layers and is not affected by the separation between the pieces like oxy-fuel cutting would be. Give it a try!

I gotta agree I bought my p cutter mainly to blow out spot welds it zips right through 3-4 layers of the inner structure (sheet metal ) once I got the hang of it I could dial it in to blow out 1 layer at a time,saving the second layer ...pretty cool...I bought it because this particular cars steel was so so hard it burned up all the drill bits and I couldnt seperate the layers the normal way ...so now I have a P cutter and I come here to learn more tricks from you guys and learned a bunch in just a couple days...Oh, the P cutter will fuse the edges together where it cuts but it snaps right apart with screwdriver...

Yea, i had seen a video of it being done after a few responses and they called it stack cutting. I gave it a shot on stainless and they did fuse together something fierce. i used a screwdriver and near deformed the pieces to an unusable state. My main problem was i was going too slow, the tip on my PM30 was tacking itself to the parts a lot. Havent tried it yet with the 375 X.

The more powerful the plasma cutter (and the higher velocity of airflow, meaning a compressor that can keep up), the fewer issues with stack cutting.

I'm still not a fan. I far prefer to make a template for the cut, and make individual repeats. Far less grinding, less distortion, and actually less work overall, especially of you need to make 50, as opposed to three.

With a good quality template, you can make repeat cuts assembly-line style and have very little dressing to do to each part.

Steve S