Plasma cutting is a very useful process in fabrication and deconstruction. Harnessing the power of electricity to generate extremely hot streams of ionized plasma, a plasma cutter can slice through just about anything.
It’s very precise, controllable, and powerful. It’s also a marvel of technology, and a big part of using it successfully is knowing how it works. So, how does plasma cutting work, what are the parts of a plasma cutting system, and what should you know about the process?
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Things like welding and plasma cutting are powerful processes using an electric arc to melt through metal quickly and precisely. This process is, naturally, noisy. Electric arcs create noise, a compressor makes noise, and the environments where cutting is often done can exacerbate that noise.
It doesn’t take much exposure to high noise levels to damage hearing, both temporarily and permanently.
So, how loud are welding and plasma cutting machines, and what can you do to minimize the noise they produce and protect yourself from what remains?
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Welding is a hazardous occupation, especially when working indoors and in enclosed spaces. Welding dangers become increasingly hazardous the tighter the welding space gets. So, welding fume extractors, eye protection, fire safety measures, and other safety protocols and devices use become that much more critical.
Welding indoors, especially in tight spots like pressure vessel welding, can easily expose the welding operators to hazardous levels of welding fumes, arc flash, burns, physical injuries, electrocution, and other welding hazards.
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There comes a time in the career of every fabricator when a single piece of material needs to be turned into more than one piece. There are, of course, many different ways to do this. The ultimate low-tech solutions include:
- Bending it until it breaks
- Saw through it with a serrated blade
- Use high pressure on a sharp edge to press and cut through it
On the flip side, you have expansive and powerful uses of modern technology and physics, capable of cutting through nearly anything. Two of the most powerful forms of cutting are waterjet cutting and plasma cutting, but how do they work, which one is better, and when should you use them? You have many questions, and we have many answers.
Note: If you have a question that we didn’t answer here, feel free to leave it in the comments or use our contact form to ask us directly. We’re always happy to help.
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When you ask anyone about welding, those who have any idea of what it is or how it works are likely to talk about arc welding. The image of the dark-tinted welding mask, the bright sparking welding torch, and the ability to fuse two things together have saturated popular media.
Those a little more “in the know” will recognize that arc welding is just one category of welding and that anything that joins two pieces of material together can rightly be called a “weld,” even if there’s no electricity involved. In fact, popular types of glue are even branded as welding.
Two of the most common types of welding when metal is involved are arc welding and oxy-acetylene welding. What are the differences between these, the pros and cons, and which one should you learn? It’s all relatively straightforward, but it’s still worth learning about the differences in a direct comparison.
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TIG welding is often considered one of the more complex types of welding. However, that reputation is due more to the margins of error in operation and the skill necessary to perform high-quality welding with the process.
The actual configuration of the welding machine is simple. So much so that, for many people, it needs to be set up once and never touched again for 99% of operations using a single-function machine.
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You have a welding project you’re working on. It’s already tricky because the pieces you’re welding are aluminum. You love using flux-core wire for the convenience of not needing extra shielding gas, but you’re pretty sure the stuff you use on steel won’t work. So, you go hunting for flux-core aluminum welding wire. What do you find?
Nothing.
Well, that’s not quite true. You’re going to find a lot of options, but the deeper you look, the worse the situation will become.
First up, you find flux-cored aluminum wire, but it’s not for welding. It’s for brazing and soldering. Brazing and soldering are similar to welding, but they operate via thermal rather than electrical energy, and they’re a lot lower temperature than welding. If you tried to feed one of these wires through your welder, not only would the welder get all gummed up with crumpled wire, but you would incinerate the wire before you even got a glimpse of what a weld would look like.
Second, you find aluminum welding wires, some of which even advertise themselves as being flux-cored. Sounds ideal, right? Well, not quite. Unfortunately, all of these listings are either soldering or brazing wires as above, or they’re solid, not flux-cored. Solid aluminum welding wire exists, and is quite common, as are mislabeled eBay listings and storefront product pages.
So what’s the deal?
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