Road trip!

[Joe Jones]

Heading down to Cookville, TN to help a man with his 4x4 table issues today. I love it when they are close by, only a two hour drive each way!

Play nice

Joe

[TJS]

Joe,
This is really cool that you help others out. Great job. I am sure you will figure it out.
T.J.

[plasmanewbie]

Nice! Road trips can be fun and great to meet new people. Travel safe Joe.

[Joe Jones]

Long day. I just got home. His PlasmaCam table was acting weird. I know! SO UNCOMMON for these tables!

I loaded my truck and drove down, expecting a long day of troubleshooting. I brought three spare controllers with me, along with cables, bearings, springs, motors, pigtails, computers, etc. etc.

We swapped out the controller first, and the table behaved normally. so I suggested that it might be the button panel on the face of the controller. We carefully unscrewed his control panel and discovered that the ribbon cable was just barely inserted into the slot, so most of the wires were not even connected.

We ended up swapping the control panel and remounting his box onto the boom arm. Then I noticed a hissing coming from his Hypertherm 30XP. His compressor was cycling too often. So we opened the plasma machine and discovered that for whatever reason, the water trap was hissing through a weep hole. I figured it was because the filter needed to be cleaned, or replaced. The red plastic retaining ring was also split and would not hold the filter in place.

We called around to find the Hypertherm Part# xxxxx filter ... in Cooksville TN. ... on Friday afternoon! RIGHT! Jimmy needed to get cutting soon, so I suggested we bypass that filter altogether. We went to Harbor Freight and selected a water trap for about twenty bucks, and then swung by NAPA to get the brass fittings that would mate up the plasma machine, to the new filter, to the air line. It was a bit of a puzzle, and of course, they didn't have the EXACT fittings we needed. However, we were able to Frankenstein the air supply together, this time with the water trap OUTSIDE of the HT 30XP, which made more sense anyway.

The air hose is connected to the ... pressure regulator. The pressure regulator is connected to the ... water trap. The water trap is connected to the ... plasma machine, and the cutting started up again!

Jimmy just sold his home and needed to move some furniture from the old home's workshop to the new workshop. Since I had nothing more pressing to do we hitched his trailer to his truck and ran two loads of furniture from the old home to the new location. It made me realize how badly I am out of shape! Sheesh!! I need to lose 120 pounds, Lucy!

We got it done and hit Golden Corral for a late lunch/early dinner. I guess I was tired. I missed three route turns and drove an extra 25 miles to get home.

There are several PlasmaCam tables near me. I like to visit other table owners to see what they are up to. Sometimes, I can even fix an issue or two while I am there.

Joe


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[plasmanewbie]

Pretty awesome Joe, your a hell of guy I bet Jimmy was pretty thankful.

[Joe Jones]

I like to help people work out pesky issues. I wish more table owners lived within a day's drive of me.

Joe