Powermax 105 overheating consumables, nozzles blowing out

[ArmourS]

I am having some intermittent issues on my Hypertherm Powermax 105 plasma torch. It's in use on an Arclight Arc Max 5x10 CNC table. So far Hypertherm's product support has not been able to solve this issue and is down to a "send it in for XX an hour troubleshooting." So I figured I'd make a post and see if anyone has an ideas before I throw an unknown amount of good money after something bad.

Basic problem is it will blow the side of the tip of a nozzle out randomly. The machine will continue to cut most of the time, sometimes it will not fully cut the material and sometimes it just cuts one direction at a horrible angle. This can occur the first use of a new set of consumables or a 200-300 pierces down the line. This is costing me quite a bit in wasted material and consumables.

No air issues that I can find. Electrode is clean, using filters and a Quincy QRHT-25 air dryer. Doing the gas test mode it seems to read within a few PSI of what the regulator says, no pressure drops between full air tank and when the compressor kicks on. Only thing I haven't done is try to plug the torch tip and pressure test the whole system to see if there is a bad leak somewhere. All the o rings look good.

The consumables do show signs of overheating via color change.

Initially it was diagnosed as a faulty Pilot Arc IGBT as it fails the jumper test in Test 6 of the troubleshooting manual. This made sense as it will sometimes, but not every time, continue to fire the arc if I've messed up a file and ran the torch off of the material. It also has no issues cutting perforated sheet metal, however the material we use has very small holes so I'm not sure how much that says. The dial is always in the non-continuous pilot arc mode.

I ordered a PA IGBT replacement kit and a Hypertherm IGBT tester. Both the new and the old PA IGBT tested fine and the machine still fails Test 6. Next likely cause was the power board itself, so I installed a new power board. No change in Test 6 and during the test it actually blew out a nozzle right then.

At this point Hypertherm was out of ideas over email and suggested sending it in.

I did start putting a clamp on amp meter over the output wire and caught it sending 57 Amps to the torch when the program was set to 45A and the front screen showed the machine was set to 45 Amp mode. It only did this for one job so far, all other jobs are outputting 44-48 Amps.

The machine still fails the PA test in Test 6, in addition pretty much none of the resistance measurements match the book.

Anybody have an ideas/need any more information? Thanks for any help.

[weldguy]

That's a tough one. I would be interested to see a picture of your blown out nozzle and electrode. Can you post pics?