CNC Plasma Gantry setup?

[HotDoggin]

So I realize that this is mostly a garage-geared forum, but I am assuming a fair amount of you guys may have far more experience than I do in the world of CNC plasma business...

I've been tasked with finding/pricing an appropriate Plasma CNC machine for my company that can handle full size sheets (eg: 8' x 20' sheets) and cut stainless that's at least 1" thick... so it's looking like the ~300-400A range.

At the moment, the only company I can find that offers a turn-key solution via the googles is ESAB.

Any of you guys have any experience with a different company or brand that you find works great for a CNC application (preferably in this size)...

Learn me on somethin!!

 

[rslaback]

My first question would be are you sure you need that much machine? If you are going to be cutting that kind of size day in and day out that is one thing but if it is a couple times a year that you need to cut that large then I would get a smaller machine and farm out the larger work. You can pay for a lot of outside work for the difference in price between that and a 4 x 8 or 5 x 10 machine.

 

[HotDoggin]

My first question would be are you sure you need that much machine? If you are going to be cutting that kind of size day in and day out that is one thing but if it is a couple times a year that you need to cut that large then I would get a smaller machine and farm out the larger work. You can pay for a lot of outside work for the difference in price between that and a 4 x 8 or 5 x 10 machine.

We do a lot of work with enclosures, so large sheets can be a regular. We are working on bidding a new job that would actually provide a great excuse to get one for our company, and something like this would actually increase the company's capability, so it's something we're strongly considering..

The biggest issue is that we have other methods we could use to cut/drill/shape sheets, but most of them end up being large panels that are required to have no joints- aka must be cnc cut somehow..

The current upcoming job presents a unique challenge in that we're going to be doing a lot of bar grating cutting as well... it's 1" tall, .1875" wide with a 1.1875 gap between bars... and to add to it it's serrated... (Seen here: http://www.mcnichols.com/images/mediabin/products/full/6601310222.gif)
First choice to cut would be a water jet, however THAT is prohibitively expensive...

 

[KPSquared]

Torchmate.

Small stuff and really big stuff. At least check'em out.

They have as small as 2x2 and as big as 10x40. . .

 

[bsaint]

4 x 8 is the decent size because sheets smaller than that have additional process fee. 5 x 10 is ideal because thats the common raw sheet standard. You have to understand replacement part cost being a home shop. I work on Laser CNC sheet metal processing machines and our replacement part cost is massive. Plus our machine new is $900k.