A few questions for Jim Colt

[Countrylane]

First of all thanks to the administration and all the faithful contributors to this forum. Have gained a lot of inspiration and help here, great clean site! I have owned a hypertherm powermax 1000 for about 10 years, bought a Dynatorch 5 x 10 table with down draft exhaust system about 7 years ago. When I setup my table I bought the machine torch new, and I wish I knew how many tons of steel have been cut with this unit. This torch was giving me a few problems like when moving to a new pierce it would go there but not fire. If I tapped on the side of the torch body gently and did restart it usually worked. This morning I just finished installing a new Duramax torch. The consumables are different, nozzle design looks different. electrodes have a little spring on the end etc. I cut a lot of 3/8 plate, some 1/2 inch, and a lot of gauge material. My wife does some art pieces to sell and we were using the fine cut tips, worked fairly well. are the 25 amp tips the same cut capacity that came with the new Duramax as what was used with the old torch? On the thicker materials I should still use the 60 amps right? The reason for the question is that an 85 amp nozzle was included with the new Duramax. Can i reasonably expect to get better cut quality, angularity, smoothness etc, as what I was getting before? It seems I can rarely achieve the number of pierces and inches of cut that others talk about, not that my performance is that bad either. I have done all the suggested things in air delivery like 3/4 inch steel lines, 2 water separators, the foam roll filter, the drops and bleed valves etc, air supply is not an issue. Does the new Duramax fit the newer Hypertherm plasma generators in the same size as well? I might be upgrading from my powermax sometime, maybe going up in capacity too.Thanks in advance and my apologies for my rambling first post!

[jimcolt]

With the Duramax torch is a DVD disc....that has the cut charts for use with your Duramax torch on your Powermax1000. Do not use the old cut charts from the Powermax1000 manual....quite different. Cut quality with the Duramax will be much better in terms of less edge angle and dross. Consumable life will be roughly 2x to 3x that of the original powermax torch. There are two sets of FineCut cut charts.....a high speed set and a low speed set. Use the low speed if your cnc machine is unstable at speeds over 150 ipm.

The Powermax1000 is maxed out at 60 amps....so the 85 amp nozzle (will work, but not good for best cut quality) is not for your system. There are no 25 amp nozzles...there are FineCut (which can run at 20 to 45 amps) and there are 45 amp shielded and 60-65 amps shielded. These are the same consumables used in the newer Powermax65, 85 and 105 systems, but the power supply end of the cable is different so the torches are not interchangeable with the newer ones.

Thanks for upgrading the torch...you will like the improvement!

Best regards, Jim Colt

First of all thanks to the administration and all the faithful contributors to this forum. Have gained a lot of inspiration and help here, great clean site! I have owned a hypertherm powermax 1000 for about 10 years, bought a Dynatorch 5 x 10 table with down draft exhaust system about 7 years ago. When I setup my table I bought the machine torch new, and I wish I knew how many tons of steel have been cut with this unit. This torch was giving me a few problems like when moving to a new pierce it would go there but not fire. If I tapped on the side of the torch body gently and did restart it usually worked. This morning I just finished installing a new Duramax torch. The consumables are different, nozzle design looks different. electrodes have a little spring on the end etc. I cut a lot of 3/8 plate, some 1/2 inch, and a lot of gauge material. My wife does some art pieces to sell and we were using the fine cut tips, worked fairly well. are the 25 amp tips the same cut capacity that came with the new Duramax as what was used with the old torch? On the thicker materials I should still use the 60 amps right? The reason for the question is that an 85 amp nozzle was included with the new Duramax. Can i reasonably expect to get better cut quality, angularity, smoothness etc, as what I was getting before? It seems I can rarely achieve the number of pierces and inches of cut that others talk about, not that my performance is that bad either. I have done all the suggested things in air delivery like 3/4 inch steel lines, 2 water separators, the foam roll filter, the drops and bleed valves etc, air supply is not an issue. Does the new Duramax fit the newer Hypertherm plasma generators in the same size as well? I might be upgrading from my powermax sometime, maybe going up in capacity too.Thanks in advance and my apologies for my rambling first post!