tomrscott
Gold Member
This is what the best-dressed plasma torches are wearing this spring, and year-round, in case you wanted to know. It's LEATHER!
Seriously, when I was replacing the handle on my torch because it was cracked and scorched pretty badly, I noticed all the things buried in that innocent looking plasma torch cable; multiple small electric control wires, larger wires for the arc, and also the air hose. On one end is a very special multi pin connector with an airline in the middle, and on the other, this elaborate torch head with lots of stuff inside the handle. It occurred to me that it would be very expensive to replace it the cable got damaged. It is not just battery cable like cable on my stick welder!
I also realzed that the jacket on the plasma torch cable was not all that thick. As I was dragging it around the driveway over rough cement and sharp steel edges I started to get pretty paranoice about it.
Then I had a lot of weld-removal gouging in tight quarters, and I saw how the lava-like crud could get spit at you and I relized how the first torch handle had gotten in such rough shape. The last straw was a piece of molten stuff finding it's way into the crack under the safety trigger, partly scorching that and making the trigger action sort of gritty. I cleaned that up and got it working smoothly again, and decided it was time for a deer hide leather cuff for the torch.
The next day, I stopped by the Napa auto parts store and bought 25 feet of that slit, flex, plastic wiring harness conduit in 3/4" size to go over the bulk of the cable for some abrasion protection.
Now I've added a deer-hide leather shroud for the first five feet of the cable from the torch head where the risk of scorching from molten stuff is most serious. Elk hide would be better, but I didn't have any of that handy. The elk I've hunted haven't been nearly as cooperative.
Here are some pictures. The scorch marks on the leather would have been burns in the plastic!
Seriously if you love your plasma torch like I love mine, consider dressing it a bit better to protect it from the violent debris it is so good at creating!
/forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif /forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif /forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif
Seriously, when I was replacing the handle on my torch because it was cracked and scorched pretty badly, I noticed all the things buried in that innocent looking plasma torch cable; multiple small electric control wires, larger wires for the arc, and also the air hose. On one end is a very special multi pin connector with an airline in the middle, and on the other, this elaborate torch head with lots of stuff inside the handle. It occurred to me that it would be very expensive to replace it the cable got damaged. It is not just battery cable like cable on my stick welder!
I also realzed that the jacket on the plasma torch cable was not all that thick. As I was dragging it around the driveway over rough cement and sharp steel edges I started to get pretty paranoice about it.
Then I had a lot of weld-removal gouging in tight quarters, and I saw how the lava-like crud could get spit at you and I relized how the first torch handle had gotten in such rough shape. The last straw was a piece of molten stuff finding it's way into the crack under the safety trigger, partly scorching that and making the trigger action sort of gritty. I cleaned that up and got it working smoothly again, and decided it was time for a deer hide leather cuff for the torch.
The next day, I stopped by the Napa auto parts store and bought 25 feet of that slit, flex, plastic wiring harness conduit in 3/4" size to go over the bulk of the cable for some abrasion protection.
Now I've added a deer-hide leather shroud for the first five feet of the cable from the torch head where the risk of scorching from molten stuff is most serious. Elk hide would be better, but I didn't have any of that handy. The elk I've hunted haven't been nearly as cooperative.
Here are some pictures. The scorch marks on the leather would have been burns in the plastic!
Seriously if you love your plasma torch like I love mine, consider dressing it a bit better to protect it from the violent debris it is so good at creating!
/forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif /forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif /forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif
