CNC Plasma, and potential laser cutting/plasma projects

Cool Stuff in Numerical Control Programming Class

I've been assigned to come up with some maintenance documentation for the Plasma CNC we have at our school. It is obvious that it isn't used much. The documentation for the torchmate 2 system is nicely done. I believe it was a previous senior project from a kit, and it's obvious the students did a wonderful job setting it up.

Today, I had the opportunity to start the machine up (after carefully reading the documentation) and jog the x and y axis around. I'd like to measure the kerf sometime soon to document that.

I eventually will need to come up with a sample part that my professor will be able to easily demo to prospective students. So i'm trying to come up with ideas for that. Here are some neat links with great ideas and source files:

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5276

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19346

In my research about the CNC plasma cutters I've stumbled across a wealth of resources that I wish I had time to dive into right now.
http://www.cncinformation.com/advanced-robotic-tech-cnc-plasma-cutter-videos/

which has a variety of videos talking about CNC plasma cutting.

I signed up for a yahoo group where I was able to find a majority of these resources from:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/plasmacutting/

Getting involved

Whether it is a detrimental thing or not I'm getting involved in two more clubs at my school.

• Mars Reach
• Society of Manufacturing Engineers

The mars reach club does high altitude balloons, rocketry, and a few other things. SME may let me do some community service with some of the engineering knowledge i'm learning at some local schools. Which actually sounds cool to me. I always loved teaching children at OMSI, and cybercamps.

I've been researching high altitude balloons for taking atmospheric pictures like the one below(100,000 feet.) I am very excited about it. I am timid to commit too much time though as I have plenty of schoolwork and other projects going on at the same time. I just made a personal decision not to let good opportunities pass me by. "Reach for the stars" so to speak.



Image from http://www.natrium42.com/halo/flight2/#hardware

Here is some of the fruits of my research:

1. http://vpizza.org/~jmeehan/balloon/
2. http://www.universetoday.com/2006/01/20/satellites-on-a-budget-high-altitude-balloons/
3. http://hackaday.com/2009/09/19/high-altitude-balloons/
4. http://www.natrium42.com/halo/flight2/#hardware
   
5. http://www.arhab.org/

On a seperate topic - i stumbled into this engineered nerf gun esque thing. http://boltsniper.com/BS-5/BS5.htm pretty slick. He calls it a FAST-ACTION RIFLE(FAR).

So for now I'm just going to try and stay on top of things, as they just keep piling up, and i keep knocking em down at about the same rate. Kind of a good and bad thing. *shrug* at least it's progress. Onward!