Member postings for Beardy Mike

Air was definitely flowing from the torch. Can't be absolutely certain it was flowing in the way it was supposed to - all I know is that the typical whooshing noise happened. Stupid question, but there's not supposed to be a hole in the electrode right? I can't see one in the original, but it's all covered in crap so I can't be 100% sure there wasn't one. Definitely no holes in the new ones

A while back I bought a used plasma cutter, which I've used semi-sucessfully a few times since. Cuts were never particularly clean, but I put that down to crappy technique and probably suboptimal settings on the dials as I mess about trying to find the right ones.

Today I got some new consumables thinking that might help. I ordered them based on the AG-60 moulded into the side of the torch, and they looked what I imagine the originals would have done before being worn out. I fitted a full set and the torch seemingly wouldn't work. I tried the original electrode with new everything else and it seemed to work fine. Swapped a new electrode back in and this time it bade a weird blue arc that wouldn't cut. This time the torch was very hot and after waiting for it to cool and taking the outer parts off it seems to have burnt itself out somehow:

It looks like a new torch is a tenner, so not the end of the world, but I need to understand what happened so that I don't keep killing them! Is this user error, inappropriate/defective electrode, or something else?

Thanks,

Mike

Thanks for all the suggestions folks, I got some time this afternoon to try a few things. I eventually tried something I probably should have started with - vigorously shaking the gallon bottle of oil. After that it immediately mixed with water to give the milky liquid I'd been hoping for all along. A thin layer of oil is floating up, which I guess is one particular component that is no longer emulsified - previously I must have just been pouring this off the top into my water mix.

My conclusion is that this probably is what the label says, although seemingly somewhat degraded by time settling and/or freezing.

I bought a mill second hand last summer, and with it came a nearly full gallon bottle of chronos multi-cut G soluble cutting oil. I've just tried mixing some up at the recommended 25:1 ratio, adding the oil to the bottle of water as instructed and it just floats to the top after mixing.

It did sit in a non-insulated garage over the winter, despite the label warning "protect from frost". Will freezing have messed up the emulsion? If so is it still usable neat rather than just chucking the whole lot away?

Engraving was part of the plan, along with letting my 3 year old boy stamp his name with the fly press (currently his favourite thing to do in the workshop). Unfortunately it was 11pm when I got it this far, so that'll have to wait for future items.

Feel free to give me a shout if you want the bottle opener geometry - I'm more than happy to save you the faff of figuring it out. You will of course still need to test that it works before final polishing

On Monday I picked up a 6x4 bandsaw for a good price, so decided to do a it of last-minute gift making for father's day. I've had some bits of rail lying around for a while waiting for a project, I figured that a slice would make a good bottle opener.

The bandsaw seems well set up and cut nice and square giving a nice event 5mm slice. That was until the blade snapped; too be fair the tooth count was far too high to be cutting the 5in web and I have no idea how old it was to start with.

Unfortunately I couldn't get a new blade same-day anywhere nearby so had to crack out the hacksaw. Luckily the bandsaw had the cut well established square and had just about broken all the way through on the central web. The hacksaw cut didn't take as long as I feared and came out just as square.

After a quick clean up with a flap disc and wire cup brush it was off to the CNC mill for the bottle opener cutout. After a couple of attempts in a scrap of steel to get the shape right I had a geometry that worked well. The Sieg KX3 happily drove a 6mm end mill through it leaving only minimal burrs.

After a final deburr and clean here's the finished article: