How to do a Pierce for hole drilling?

We have been having issues with cutting holes on our Table X with Flexcut 125. When I do the program it seems to be beveling the holes and then the whole are not to the diameter I need. When i am doing my program I have the Path being my outside edge and my holes. I use a male cut path. From what I read when I do a male cut path on my outside edges it should take my holes to be a female cut. When I have been checking my holes they are smaller diameters than what I am calling out. I figured if I do a pierce for the hole center than I am able to drill or punch the hole to the size I need. Cutting holes with this table has been an ongoing problem. Any help with this would be great.

 

Rule of thumb is 1.5 x the material thickness to achieve best quality smallest hole you can cut using that material. When cutting 2x4's at 16 on center you dont cut on the line you scribed you cut beside it so that the cut length is correct to accomodate for the thickness of the blade. Is no different with plasma this is the reason the cut line is offset to the inside to account for the material being removed, you will always get a tapered hole with plasma unless you are using a hi-def plasma cutter.

To create a pierce point, reduce the size of your holes, such as 1/16 which would essentially just pierce and move on to the next feature.

 

I have been following that rule of 1.5X for hole size. This is an ongoing issue we have had since we got the table up and running. It seems to be worse when we cut 1/2" and thicker. We have slowed our speeds down. we have tried going to the next higher amperage for the material. We have gotten to the point where are going back to drilling or punching the holes. I figured if I at least have a pierce hole for the center of the hole than it will save on layout time to drill or punch.

 

I have tried the pierce today on a part. It is made out of 3/4" plate. It is a 12" x 14" plate with 4 holes in it. When trying the pierce I noticed it didn't go all the way through the plate. Is it suppose to go through it? I did a 1/16" hole. Should the hole I did for the pierce be larger base on material thickness? I want to keep trying this but it seems to burn out my shielding cap quick. After the 4 pierces and the cut it made the hole in the shielding cap oblong. I was surprised it went so fast. My settings are: mode is set to auto, pierce delay is 1.00, pierce height is .38, cut height is .16, set voltage is 138.2, with sample voltage on. I am not sure what else to do. We want to use the table to cut holes or do pierces to use as a guide for drilling or punching. With cutting holes, my holes are still an issue with thicker material.

 

Increase the pierce delay to pierce all the way through try higher values such as 1.5 or 2.0. Cutting that thick of material it is generally recommended to turn off height control, no reason to cut in Auto mode set it to Manual.

 

Wow, heavy material.. I've cut 1 inch (22mm) spring steel but only with edge start.. What Amps you use? My Thermal Dynamics A80 maxed out to 100A..!! It did a reasonable cut at 9 IPM..
I did some Bead Lockers for a friends 20 rims (Mercedes Unimog) 12mm bolts 24 bolts per ring. I ended up marking hole centers with plate marker, tacking rings together and drilling with drill press.. Tedious drilling but plate marker centers were accurate enough so welding rings to rims did not have to be 'on register'.
My 4x8 gantry kit TM 3 table, and the nature of the plasma taper, just doesn't seem to be uniform enough for bolt holes.. By the by, I've also found that piercing holes can temper the steel making subsequent drilling troublesome.
Mmm no it's not a water table..
Anyway, good luck!

 

Hi Everyone,

Ah! Edge Start, the magic phrase. I can't quite wrap my arm around that process. Oh, I get the having to start the torch half on half off the material to start an arc. Been doing that for a long time with ripcut.gm. I know how critical torch placement is to strike an arc on an edge. What I can't quite picture is how to get the torch to go to that precise spot on the edge of the material for that first critical pierce. I think I get the process described in the CAD manual that shows connecting all the lead ins and outs except one. That's fine for going between parts. When I hit Run Job, the torch obviously going to move from program zero to the first pierce point right? That's the one I want to edge pierce. Do I have to know PRECISELY how long and what angle to make that lead in to position it exactly on the edge???? Seems like there could be quite a bit of trial and error there? I thought about getting the file all loaded, program zero set and ready to hit Run Program and then moving the torch manually to the edge and do a Run From Here????


All we have been cutting is artsy fartsy stuff for years. Thickest cold rolled I can remember doing is 1/4". Going to try branching out a bit and doing some industrial type stuff and figure I better figure this out.

Thanks for any and all help,

Cliff

I think I'm making sense with my explanation, The older I get the sometimes I wonder.

 

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