Torture Testing a Chinese Plasma Cutter (Videos)

ChuckE2009 · Dec 26, 2012

Goodafternoon everyone, hope y'all had an awesome christmas :thumbsup:

Anyway, here's what I've been up to lately...

A few months back, I was approached by Longevity and asked if I wanted to try out one of their new machines, the ForceCut 42i on loan, to make videos with, test out... Whatever really, it seemed like they wanted to just get it to me, and let me do my thing with it.

I thought for a few minites... And came up with my conditions... They'd ship it here, pay for the materials used to test it, and ship it back... Simon (The Longevity guy on here) happily accepted, and a few days later, I got a big box from Hayward, California :licking:

I opened everything up and got it setup... Where I encountered my first problem with the machine. The air fitting on the back of it was... Well, weird, and I wasnt sure I was getting air into the machine. My air fittings would "clamp" onto their fitting, but the AIR/TIP light on the plasma cutter was on, and it wouldnt display any other signs of life.

I talked to Simon and his Tech Support guys, and they told me to buy another air hose, cut the end off it, and hose-clamp it to the unique fitting. Apperently, that one batch of plasma cutters got European air fittings on them? Or something like that, I don't really know :confused3:

Anyway, a quick trip to Lowe's later, and we were in business. The fan roared to life, I gave the trigger a nice squeeze, and compressed air rushed out the end of the torch... A second later and a bright blue pilot arc flashed from the nozzle, and we were ready to go!! YeeeeHaw!! I was pretty excited....

Ever since that nice fall day, I've put this machine through a lot. Initially, I was only going to have it for like a week to test, but I figured "Well I have it... Might as well use it" and put it in a build video for the Burninator BBQ project. A bunch of people saw it, and started asking questions about it, and Simon was like "Just... Keep it for a while... We'll send another one to SouthPaw" and I thought, "Hey, free use of a plasma.... Hard to say no to that!!" (Sorry SouthPaw BTW, if you're on this forum lol, :ashamed: )

And since then, its been in lots of projects of mine. I have a bunch more planned for it. With the help of a couple people I know online, I came up with a series of tests to put this machine through, and gave it ****...

Ya know, I'd consider these tests "un-biased". Its not my personal plasma cutter. I have no monetary stake in it, or the success of Longevity. They aren't giving me a commission, I don't want one... I consider myself to be like one of those "Independent Labs"... Its not their problem if they kill something they test...

Think about it from my perspective... I make YouTube videos, and a video about a plasma cutter being pushed over the edge, and going up in smoke is as good or better for me as one about how well a plasma cutter works, or how cool it is. I mean yeah, they gave me a stick welder, but that was just so I'd put that in videos, too... Simon said it was mine no matter how the plasma testing went...

If I had successfully killed this thing, I would have called Simon, and they would have probably sent out another one the next day. Its not my job to fix it, or to pay for it. It would NOT have been my problem, and so, I had zero reason to go easy on this machine. Which is good, because I sure didnt :cool2:

Basicly, I put this little machine through everything its capable of doing. I wish I had a CNC setup here so I could try it on that, but I dont. Here is what I did do:

Severance Cutting (How thick will it REALLY cut?)

Pierce Cutting (Severance cutting.... But not from an edge)

Expanded Metal Cutting (Beats the snot out of using a cut-off wheel

)

Aluminum Cutting

Dual-Voltage (Just had to try it

)

Straight-Edge Cutting (With those non-drag type tips)

Comparing it to my Hypertherm Powermax 45 (As requested by many people, lol)

ChuckE2009 · Dec 26, 2012

ChuckE2009 · Dec 26, 2012

Sounds like any other generic plasma cutter videos, right? Dont worry ladies and... Mostly gentlemen... I've saved the best for last.

The great ForceCut endurance test. Basically, I set it to MAX amperage (40 amps), and started cutting. This machine has a rated duty cycle of 40%, and a consumable life thats... well... less than that of my Hypertherm, so I figured I'd go buy up over $200.00 in steel plate, and CUT, and CUT, and cutandcutandcutandcut.... Until the plasma cutter shut itself down from overheating, or until the consumables were done. Not just done as in "seen better days" but done as in "never going to cut again".

I had no idea what I had myself in for.

I honestly think I pushed a 90% duty cycle for three "cut-a-thons". I did my best to not stop, but I had to stop because my camera would fill up with footage. It was intense, tons of non-stop of cutting, each cut-a-thon was around 36 or 38 minites without stopping. I completed over 1,000 inches of cut on 1/4" and 3/8" plate!!

I'd flip my hood up every few slices, just to make sure nothing was on fire in my shop... Or if it was, to make sure it wasnt something important.

And how'd that little $800 machine perform? Flawlessly... The video tells more :drink:

It has a couple things I don't like, but I talk more about that in the videos. Overall, I'm VERY impressed with this machine... It was my first experience with a Longevity machine, and I havent had a single issue with it since I got it setup and cutting. Although I'm happy to donate the time to test out a machine like this, Simon's still getting a bill for the steel it took to create Mt. Forcecut

At the end of the day, its not a bad machine, not at all.

I had a friggin BLAST testing it out, and making these videos. Longevity, I'd be happy to test out ANY other machine you guys wanna send me. If almost anyone else wanted to send me a machine to try out, and make videos of, just let me know, I'd love to make this series again with a different machine, and i'm all for getting different colors going in my shop :thumbsup:

Anyway, I honestly hope you guys like the videos. I did my best to put this machine through its paces, hope you guys enjoy it

ChuckE2009 · Dec 26, 2012

Here are the consumables after the Torture Test:

and here's how the machine performs on 110 volts:

Well that was fun you guys... But now, I'm going to get back to doing what I do best. Your regularly-scheduled ChuckE2009 Build Videos will resume momentarily :thumbsup:

Shield Arc · Dec 26, 2012

Lanse do you use any kind of air drier?

Remember when you plasma cut aluminum, and you're going to weld on the cut edge of that piece, you need to cut 1/16" or at least 1/32" big and sand / grind to the desired dimension.

You need to get one of these.

ericher69 · Dec 26, 2012

Lance,

Great video's very impressive what that unit can do for a "Non US assembled machine"

Now just waiting for the spectrum 625 extreme vids to make my purchase lol

Ps. You may want to ask Simon for a few bucks to help pay for the hydro bill!

Great job

muddstopper · Dec 27, 2012

Shield Arc said:
Lanse do you use any kind of air drier?

Remember when you plasma cut aluminum, and you're going to weld on the cut edge of that piece, you need to cut 1/16" or at least 1/32" big and sand / grind to the desired dimension.

You need to get one of these.

Is the purpose for cutting big with aluminum so that you sand out impurities deposited in the aluminum while Plasma cutting?