Radius gauges?

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Thanks all, a bunch of great ideas you have. If anyone has any others please post them!

Here is one that Hypertherm makes.
Honestly we always made our own circle cutters by simply cutting a hole in a given plate large enough so that the torch nozzle slipped through and duct taped the torch tight to it then had a sliding coupling with a hole and a nut welded on with a wing nut to tighten it to whatever radius size was needed. the coupling also had a short sharpened tip to locate the center of the deaired radius. Very similar to the Hypertherm $150.00 jobber as depicted in the attached picture. But cost almost nothing. Mine is 30 years old and still works great. Also have one with a shaft coupling welded to it for my cutting torch,, But honestly since I purchased my cnc several years ago, most of my applications are doable on my cnc machine.
This one from Hypertherm looks real nice though

Edit: but after reexamining your question I think you were referring to drawing a circle not cutting one. so.......
Beam compass for me as well for drawing circles..

Doug - I can remember looking "real hard" at that Hypertherm attachment back in the days before I had my plasma table. I always thought they were pretty pricey. I ended up using metal "templates" to manually guide my torch for cutting circles. I cut lots of circles into my custom radiator fan shrouds back in the day when I was manufacturing my Porsche 914 V8 conversion kits and accessories. But yes - I agree - it looks real nice.

David

[TJS]

That is a cool too David. I have a set of Radius gauges made by Starrett Tool company. I use these for smaller radii. ex. I cap most of my square and rectangle tubing. The wall thickness of the tube changes the radius so there are many different radii in the non round tube steel family. These gauges are my go-to for making caps.
T.J.

[acourtjester]

Inkscape also has a "Linked Offset" function for things like kerf width compensation. I have used that for cutting a background layer for plaques.

[Jason@bc]

The in-betweens would be good, but not necessary i don't think. These can be fudged up to make the needed radius and lines extended.
I want to engrave the sizes on the next one for reference, but this killed the coffee lid, roll of tape, bottom of spray can, dog bowl.... all of it.
Its one of those, why didn't I do this sooner....Thanks again.

Mo - you are quite welcome! Here is the file with the sizes added for engraving.

David

circle template with sizes.dxf image.jpg
circle template with sizes.dxf
circle template with sizes.svg

Thanks David! This will come in very handy indeed.

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[/quote]
Thanks David! This will come in very handy indeed.
[/quote]

Jason - your are quite welcome! This one was fun to draw and should cut well as Mo showed us above. I was also thinking about cutting one from 1/8" hardboard (Masonite) on my cnc router. It would not be as robust as one from steel, but fun to do nonetheless.

David

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That is a cool too David. I have a set of Radius gauges made by Starrett Tool company. I use these for smaller radii. ex. I cap most of my square and rectangle tubing. The wall thickness of the tube changes the radius so there are many different radii in the non round tube steel family. These gauges are my go-to for making caps.
T.J.

TJ - I also have a set of the Starrett radius gauges that are really handy for the work I do. I also actually manufacture a different sort of radius gauge specifically for the metal shaping community. It is used to match the die size to the sheet metal part being planished. I sometime also use if for other applications.

David

radiusgauge3.jpg

radiusgauge2.jpg

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Thanks David!
cuts great and takes the place of most all the random crap i look for when looking for radius'
I hit it quickly with a wire cup, still needs cleaning up. 16ga, 350ipm 45a

Mo - I cut two of them this evening from 12 ga. cr steel using FineCuts at 40 amps. They actually cut pretty nicely. I will try the acid bath cleaning on one of them, and the other one I hit with the wire cup and d/a sander. I sprayed it with satin clear and it is drying as we speak.

circle template front side.jpg

circle template front side 4.jpg

I put my lead-ins at the ends of the slots to keep the curved portions smooth.

leadins.jpg

I also want to engrave the sizes on at least one of them. I've still got my Plasmacam Engraving attachment, but sold my second table that I had it mounted to. I personally think it is too much of a pita to swap the torch for engraver and visa versa on my Plasmacam table, so I think I will build a mount to use the engraver on one of my cnc router tables. If I had both torch and engraver on the Plasmacam table at the same time, it would limit my ability to cut full 48 x 48 sheets (really half sheets, but my table is a 4x4).

David

[Joe Jones]

NUMBER PUNCH.jpg

[TJS]

I made a mistake. I thought they were Starrett but they are Lufkin.

20230813_094813.jpg

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Lufkin is good stuff! I've got some Lufkin tools as well. Back in the day they were available form Rutland Tool Supply and Enco before they were both bought out by MSC. Once they were gone, MSC jacked up the prices "big time". I only buy from MSC as a last resort.

David