What is a good starter water table?

MinnesotaEric · Dec 24, 2019

The conversation went like this:

"You should just buy a plasma cutter," Other Eric said suggestively.

Pondering, Eric replied, "I'd like to but I want a CNC port and I don't want to drop $2400 on a Hypertherm."

This started a discussion. See, Other Eric services and sells (occasionally) CNC machines into the boat and camper manufacturing industry and has a pile of hands-on experience. But both of us would like to start fabbing more stuff from just art to actual tube frames for OHVs as well as making custom street-legal cars.

It'd also be stupid handy for when either of us are fabbing something up for modifying or fixing machines as well as make endless good YouTube fodder for my YouTube channel.

I saw this deal, but would like to get into a larger water table since Bemidji Steel is in our backyard and is the best place for us to get our metal out of in larger sheets.

CrossFire 45A CNC Plasma Table Bundle – Langmuir Systems

Any tips, hints or suggestions would be kindly appreciated.

Roadworthy · Dec 24, 2019

Water with sand does a nice job of cutting almost everything but if the material is too thick (say half inch steel) the jet kind of flares out and a torch or plasma cutter does a better job. The water will still cut the thicker material but the cut gets intolerably wide on the back side.

Big Barn · Dec 24, 2019

A friend of mine wanted to get into building tables and bought a CrossFire unit just to see what it was like.

It was just as bad as the reviews say it is. Okay value for the low dollar but it is really a hobby users machine.

He tried to give it to me but I didn’t even want it taking up space.

He now imports big tables from China for resale.

yomax4 · Dec 24, 2019

This setup will cut some stuff but without a lifter/height control there are limits on cut quality. Anything a guy gets is better than nothing and in this category you could spend ad much as you want. I c an't tell from the pic what the motion is. Ball screw or gear or belt? Crazy low cost. In MN. Check out Bulltear ind. Scandia. He makes some sweet lower cost heavy duty tables.

RPW · Jan 3, 2020

I've got the langmuir system table and love it. Now saying that there are caveats. Original table didn't come with it but users found away to add it. It is by nature designed for the hobbist or light fabricators. They have now come out with a pro version which is a 4x4 table. They have a THC for it. It is still a reasonable price for someone to get started with. Does it measure up to the big boys? No but it was never designed for the heavy manufacturer. They also sell a reasonably priced plasma cutter with CNC port.

MinnesotaEric · Jan 21, 2020

After playing around with a $30,000 Samson/Hypertherm 510 set-up, I decided to go with Langmuir Systems Crossfire Pro. Since all my video stuff is Mac, I'll need to chase down a PC Laptop for the AutoDesk software. The Autodesk software, despite needing to be checked out every time is a bit of a feature since my sister (an experienced process engineer) is a total pro at Solidworks and the Fusion 360 software is the weenie version. I plan on making grill guard inserts and my axle guards for Kioti's NX series tractors as my first "start-paying-for-this-thing-in-the-garage" projects. The grill guard is already a .dxf file, and it shouldn't take me long to puzzle out the axle guards (although I do need a press brake and must weld the axle guards to make them).