Im looking to buy a plasma cutter within the next few days and would like some opinions on the following.

Lincoln pro-cut 55 best price i found was $1950 shipped

Thermal Dynamics cutmaster51 best price found was $1428 plus shipping.


Im leaning towards the lincoln only becasue my tig and mig welders are lincoln.

 

I personally have the thermal dynamics unit and I wouldnt buy any other brand. I too have a lincoln tig 275 but would still buy a thermal dynamics if I was going to buy a new unit. Thermal dynamics gets my vote

 

I got the because I almost stole it from a police auction.. Its a great unit!

I would buy Thermal as my second choice tho

 

how bout hypertherm powermax 1000?, planning on getting one...

 

Pfffth, who needs a plasmacutter, when you can use this


Just kidding, yeah I'm wanting a plasmacutter too, cheapest I saw around here was 800euros, with a cut strength of 8mm. Oh well, maybe in the future

 

for Hypertherm. I use the 1250 at work and its just NASTY. We were looking at units from both Miller and Lincoln but our dealer sold us on the Hypertherm after a side by side demo....Hypertherm just does plasma cutting...its well worth it.

 

The lincoln plasma cutters are absolute garbage. I worked at a plant recently and we had a lot of demolition work to do. They rented 2 of those machines. They go through tips really fast. The design is really shitty and will often lose contact and need adjustment. In other words, if you tighten the ring down like they say to, it will ground out on the inside and give a fault code. If you loosen it too much, you will get no arc at all.

It's garbage.

I personally havn't ever used a Miller plasma...or at least I can't remember doing it.

ESAB make some really nice plasma cutters.

 

The Thermal machine I have works great and and has given me many years of service. One of the important things that I am concerned about is the tip design, The Thermal products offer a tip that allows you to follow a template easily. The tip dia on my torch is only 1/4 in dia and I have made many templates out of 1/8 masonite and they work very well. Templates that get allot of use I will make out of aluminum. I wouldn't consider and torch design that has a tip dia of more than 3/8 and a stick-out of at least 1/4. Take a good look at the torch tip design and think about how well it will follow a template. Cutting through seam sealers , adhesives and undercoating or maybe some rust is not good work for a plasma cutter and is best left for a good ol oxy / acetylene setup. Pretty clean metals cutting irregular parts following a template or even freehand is where the plasma cutter ex cells

Bob Kapser

 

doesn't miller lincoln and hyperterm use the same kind of torch???... i've heard a lot of good things about esab too, and they seem to have a smaller case for the same capacity, and much longer duty cycle than the other machines......

 

No the torches are different from brand to brand and they are sometimes different within a brand depending on the size of the machine. I believe that the Thermals are very similar but do change size for the amps of the machine. I believe you will find that most brochures will have a pic of the torch head as it is a key factor.

Bob Kasper

 

We have a Miller somethingorrather. It's nothing too impressive, but it is one of the cheaper models, and it's getting a little old.

The tip design is a little large, but it's durable if you use it correctly.

 

got the thermal dynamics one today. Im pretty happy with it.

thanks for all the opinions