Posted by Desoto61 [138.162.0.42] on Tuesday, August 04, 2015 at 15:40:19 :
In Reply to: Re: Time for bed posted by Dean [208.93.180.75] on Tuesday, August 04, 2015 at 11:18:20 :
They can make super clean cuts if you stay inside their normal cutting range and have a steady hand.
Imagine trying to cut metal using a laser pointer. This is basically what you are doing. You don't realize how unstable your hand is till you're trying to free-hand cutting metal. A straight edge is vital if you want a nice cut. You can get "drag cups" that actually let you touch the cup to the metal, which makes it more like cutting with a pen, but you'll still want a straight edge. If done slow enough and consistently enough it's very clean and what slag there is can be knocked loose with a hammer and some light blows.
The cut at the back was much thicker basically in the "sever" portion of the cut, my machine will do it but it's not pretty, but that just means I have to do more cleanup with a grinding wheel, but I'm going to weld it anyway so it didn't need to be as smooth.
It's probably not quite as smooth as a cutting wheel, but you can make any shape you want, just build a template out of something smaller to account for the torch offset and trace. I did it many times for parts. Basically a manual version of the CNC tables. Worked great!