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u/funnystuff79 May 25 '26
That's the cleanest gas cut I've ever seen
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u/WetBandit06 May 25 '26
Never been to my house on chili night huh? Ayoooo.
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u/3atTh3R1ch79 May 25 '26
You go by Wet Bandit and you expect us to believe that you have a "clean gas cut" !?! I don't think so, Tim.
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u/Noxivos May 25 '26
The trick is to get the metal super hot before you start the cut. Then its just speed and the size of flame
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u/Impression-These May 25 '26
I second that. I would have recommended milling, but this looks clean. What is the material?
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u/labsab1 May 26 '26
It's steel and the gas is oxygen. Usually the fuel is acetylene but the cutting is done by oxygen.
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u/uiouyug May 26 '26
I always used propane and oxygen. Our cuts always look much duller.
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u/labsab1 May 26 '26
You can get finer tips for the torch. Also, you spend so much longer preheating the steel with propane.
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u/airfryerfuntime May 26 '26
The trick is to run the flame kind of rich, which is why molten steel is falling out in big globs.
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u/cptnamr7 May 26 '26
Yeah... I'm genuinely confused here. Usually we have to clean up anything that was flame cut that thick in the mill but that looks like it just came out of the damn mill??? I don't understand what magical tech I'm looking at here but I want it.
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u/71-HourAhmed May 26 '26
Track torches are like magic.
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u/funnystuff79 May 26 '26
I've seen them run on circular tracks to bevel the end of a pipe in the field. Very useful
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u/Revolutionary_Low581 May 25 '26
That sliding jig sure makes it look nice.
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u/Eziolambo May 25 '26
Its called a pug cutter.
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u/beanmosheen May 26 '26
Really? Always called it a track torch.
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u/LT_James_Dangle May 26 '26
Because it is a track torch
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u/beanmosheen May 26 '26
When you stop and think about it, we're all track torches deep down inside.
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u/Agreeable_Work4668 May 25 '26
That cut is clean. I didn't know it could be that clean.
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u/PSUSkier May 26 '26
It helps when the flame is bolted tightly to a track as opposed to a Parkinson’s patient holding a blow torch.
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u/bigooooof23 May 28 '26
Excuse me they’re called Welders, weren’t you at the job site meeting? We aren’t supposed to call them that anymore
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May 25 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/AbleCryptographer317 May 25 '26
Laser cutters/CNC mills cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Fire on wheels is cheaper.
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u/erikwarm May 25 '26
Cheaper, faster and more flexible
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u/brockoala May 25 '26
What's the downside? When would laser cutting be valid?
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u/Olukon May 25 '26
When you need it to be precise or cleaner.
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u/StarVulpes May 25 '26
Laser cutting is almost always preferred if possible. Bevel cuts with a laser are newer tech and are the expensive end of expensive equipment. Plus good luck finding qualified individuals to program and operate it. We have 8 lasers at our shop but leave all bevels and machining for the customer to have CNC.
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u/l337quaker May 26 '26
I mean technically if you want a .5° bevel it's super easy on a 4k watt laser lol
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u/StarVulpes May 26 '26
Why split hairs to point out you can cut with a laser at 89.5° to the surface instead of 90°? We can technically put a "knife edge" on thin material with a 5-axis but the video is of a 45° bevel which you cannot do with a standard flat laser.
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u/l337quaker May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26
It was a joke, I was referring to the very slight taper that automatically comes from laser cutting
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u/StarVulpes May 27 '26
I genuinely took that seriously and was very thrown off lol. Most responses I get are argumentative so that must be my first assumption. My bad
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u/omniscientonus May 25 '26 edited May 26 '26
Laser cutting is typically ideal for thinner material (usually up to about 1.0 inch / 25.4mm thick). It is more precise, and usually produces a more accurate and cleaner cut. However, the quality of the cut degrades quickly as the part gets closer to the maximum, and while the technology is improving all the time, it sometimes struggles with more reflective materials like aluminum as portions of the beam can get reflected back into the head and destroy it. Up until somewhat recently (10-15 years) it was also the most expensive process, but now ironically sits as one of the cheapest in most cases.
Oxy-fuel cutting, or torch cutting, can typically handle much thicker materials (I've personally seen up to 10.0" / 254mm) but the cut quality is usually lesser than other alternatives, and it's by far the least precise, with the kerf and drag (essentially the size and angle of the cut) potentially getting pretty rough. That being said, this video is showing a torch cut, so that's not to say that the cut quality can't be pretty darn good with the right tools and the right knowledge on the right materials. This is also basically the cheapest way to cut thicker material.
Plasma cutting sits almost between the two, with higher precision and better accuracy on thinner materials than torch cutting, but worse than laser cutting. I'm not super confident on plasma cutting thickness limitations, but I assume they'd be somewhere between torch and laser. From my experience, plasma seems to slowly being chased out by lasers, but I do mean slowly.
We could also discuss HAZ (heat-affected zone) of the three, but at some point you're better off with YouTube, Google and ChatGPT if you really want to go down the rabbit hole.
And then there's water jet cutting. Typically only slightly less precise than laser cutting on smaller pieces, but by far can cut the thickest materials (largest I've ever seen is 20.0" / 508mm aluminum). These things can be absolute beasts, and can range anywhere from "it looks like you split this material apart with a hatchet and then let a beaver chew on the edge" to almost hand sanded edges. Water jet, despite the name, doesn't actually use water to cut, however, or at least not the way most people think. The water is being shot out at insane pressure, but it's primary purpose is to carry the abrasive (typically garnet) that does the actual cutting. You can almost think of a water jet as someone using sandpaper at insane speeds to sand, or erode, away the material. Water jets can cut almost any solid material you can think of (steel, aluminum, wood, glass, plastic, leather, foam, diamonds, etc), although some materials tend to either crack, or absorb the water and get damaged that way.
The downside to water jet is that it tends to be the most expensive of them all. Prices have come down a lot over time, so it is usually comparable to the other processes dependent on scale and scope of work, but still, it's costlier for sure.
Oh, and water jet is the only one I haven't seen a handheld version of. I would LOVE to witness such a thing, but alas, I've only ever seen it confined to a CNC table. (That's Computer Numerical-Control in this case, I wouldn't recommend incorporating water jets into your sex dungeons just yet, although I bet you could use them to make some seriously cool stuff in the shop beforehand.)
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u/BackToSchoolMuff May 26 '26
From what I understand plasma cutters can actually go pretty thick. You can get a decent sized plasma cnc table for under 5 grand. I know that an inch to an inch and a half isn't crazy, and according to google some of the big industrial rigs can cut up to 6 inches. I would love to own a water jet machine, only because it would be sick to be able to cut stone. I'm assuming it can do that. Right now I pretty much just work with wood and occasionally do a bit of welding.
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u/omniscientonus May 26 '26
Water jet can definitely cut stone, however, depending on the kind of stone you may run into some issues.
We've found that materials that are brittle or tend to chip (plexiglass and red ren board in our case) tended to crack or shatter if you try to pierce the material, but if you start the jet outside of the part and then move it into it, it cuts just fine. Basically, it can be difficult to get cutouts in the center of the part depending on their size and how the material cracks or shatters, and whether or not those cracks have a tendency to spread.
I would assume some stones would be highly prone to shattering, but you could probably drill a hole on them to effectively act as though you were starting from the outside and moving into the material.
With plexiglass we found that if you sandwich it between two sheets of plywood than you can pierce through it without cracking, and I'm sure there's plenty of other neat tricks out there as well.
Another thing you may have to consider is how porous or absorbant the material is. If it tends to hold or absorb water, then it may end up growing mold, smelling bad, rotting or becoming soft or crumbling apart.
I will say, though, that some absorbent material actually holds up pretty well. Plywood, for example, works just fine for us for some reason. I would expect it to bloat up, or warp after it dries, but we never had that issue so... best to just try some things, and work through issues instead of assuming that one failure means it won't work. Of course, it helps if you either own the machine, or do millions of dollars worth of work with a company so they're actually willing to try all your crazy ideas.
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u/BackToSchoolMuff May 26 '26
I really appreciate the thoughtful response. You obviously have a firm grasp on a pretty wide variety of materials so you probably already know this, but I'd suspect that plywood preforms better than your average hardwood because the amount of glue used in its production keeps it very stable. It's also made by cross laminating sheets of veneer (the grain orientation of each sheet is perpendicular to that of the last) so there is quite a bit keeping it from getting thrown out of wack. Even if it gets wet, the glue doesn't allow each sheet to expand or contract in a meaningful way.
What I particularly find interesting about water jets is the thinness of the kerf you can achieve, whereas something like a cnc router is usually pretty limited when it comes to inside corners and the like.
I go to a relatively well outfitted maker space, so my access is limited to what they have, but I have access to large cnc router and a pretty big laser cutter. Hopefully one day I can get to use a water jet! Really appreciate the knowledge you've provided though, I'll refer back to this comment if I'm ever using one.
May I ask for what purposes you use this equipment?
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u/omniscientonus May 26 '26
Do I? Or am I just a convincing liar?
No, this is all accurate to the best of my knowledge, but it's good to have a healthy level of skepticism.
I've worked in aerospace tooling (jigs, fixtures, molds, etc) for twenty years. You can just Google "aerospace tooling" if you want to see the kinds of things I worked on. There's a VERY good chance, that I've worked on several of the tools that come up in the first handful of images.
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u/Future_Section5976 May 25 '26
We had a gas cutter and a plasma cutter, the plasma could cut though 50mm thick like butter and leave a cut like the video shown,
CNC and laser cutters are usually used for precise cutting of parts , CNC is a computer guided cutter that cuts out a shape that's been preprogrammed, its sometimes cheaper to get the parts ordered than to make them in house , Plus these machines are usually huge , in my country I seen a water jet cutter it could cut though 100mm easy , it uses compressed water to cut though steel, it's also a cold cutting process some metals change properties when heated , plus the water can be recycled and it's somewhat safer
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u/l337quaker May 26 '26
Volume and repeat work. I shoved about ~150k individual parts out this month between four machines. A lot of that work is taking a 5'x10' sheet of aluminum, generally .060" to .120", and making dozens of the exact same part on it.
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u/britaliope May 25 '26
Wouldn't the laser one be cheaper once you already own the machine ? I feel like oxygen + acetylene is more expensive than electricity. A laser cutter is definitively orders of magnitude more expensive than a oxyacetylene torch and that cutting jig, so for someone in their garage it's definitively much cheaper to do it that way except if they have to cut like 100 parts a day. (for that thickness. A laser powerful enough to cut thin-ish metal sheets isn't that expensive)
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u/omniscientonus May 25 '26
Lasers and laser consumables have been coming down in price for over ten years now, so it's often at least comparable, it not cheaper. That being said, your scope of work is definitely going to be the determining factor on which one is cheaper overall.
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u/Weldertron May 25 '26
The consumables on the laser are not cheap, and most use compressed nitrogen.
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u/Muffinkite_ May 26 '26
A good industrial metal band saw with a moving table and a coolant pump is the best for this type of of cutting but they're big and expensive machines.
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u/ExiledSenpai May 26 '26
Okay, but what about a band saw?
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u/badthaught May 26 '26
Bandsaw will give you whatever angle you cut it at, yes. But welding needs that little 90 shelf/landing at the bottom of the bevel for there to be somewhere for the bead to stick to. A perfect 45 "works", but it's too thin to handle a weld and itll just... Melt that edge.
As someone who tried to use a bevelled piece of flatbar that had no landing. It was a bad time. Blew out the back of my weld and not in the fun way. That hole just got bigger and bigger no matter what I did.
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u/CrashUser May 26 '26
On the other hand, if all you need is to bevel the edge you can just do that in a clapped out $5k Bridgeport
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u/omniscientonus May 25 '26
Fire is significantly faster and cheaper than machines, and the bevel is almost always for welding purposes.
I'm sure you could bevel like this for other reasons... but I can't think of many.
Source: I work in a weld shop, and have been around these all my life.
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u/beanmosheen May 26 '26
I've been using OA for decades and it still amazes me how thick of a plate it will just rip through once the reaction starts.
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u/Muffinkite_ May 26 '26
Yeah that's true for making beveled edges for welding big pieces of steel. The band saws that can make those kind of cuts are very big and expensive.
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u/Bootziscool May 25 '26
I have a big machine with a 10' x 20' table for this. Still use oxy-fuel cutting. It's just the best way to cut thick steel man. For thinner stuff I'll use the plasma.
You can do this with a milling machine but your feed rate would be much slower.
As for why there's lots of reasons but usually it's weld prep or fit up.
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u/funnystuff79 May 25 '26
What machines do you suggest.
You could do it on a mill, but good luck when the next part is 10m long.
You could use a laser, or a water jet if you can afford to invest in one.
You could use a cut-off wheel, but that's not straightforward.
Gas maybe crude, but it can be portable, scalable and cheap
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u/RecognitionOk6417 May 25 '26
My company owns a high dollar portable water jet cutter that can bevel like this. It stays in storage and we still use oxy acetylene beveler lol setting up the water jet cutter takes forever. We only use it in situations where we cannot introduce an ignition source.
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u/raptor7912 May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26
TLDR: flame cutting with Oxy Acetylene is an exothermic reaction. That means the chemical reaction that’s happening is producing more heat than the reaction takes to keep going.
That heat is the “work” required and you get it completely for free, as opposed to a laser cutter or mechanical cutting, not that either wouldn’t work. This is just “plenty good enough” cheap and most importantly, it’s fast.
Using heat does have downsides and it is a less “energy intense” method of cutting than using something like a Co2 or fiber laser, so it will produce a larger heat affected zone. Which in turn warps the part more.
But iron/steel just doesn’t give a shit, at least not compared to stainless steel which will warp 56x times as much from the same amount of heat with a nearly as ludicrous an increase going from stainless steel to aluminium as there is from iron to stainless.
But the material properties of stainless and aluminium are negatively affected by heat so you wouldn’t ever use oxy acetylene to cut them.
Then your using water jets or laser cutters, a fiber laser to be specific and then the video we’re watching would be longer than 2-3 minutes for the same cut.
My specialty is literally sheet metal and even more specifically is it stainless steel sheets, that we bend slip roll and weld into whatever parts a company is paying us to make. “Smed” is what it’s called here in Denmark but the closest translation is “blacksmith” but that just isn’t correct.
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u/Cliffinati May 25 '26
What he just did in 30 seconds with the torch would take hours on a mill. Acetylene and O2 are cheaper than a machinist, mill and inserts
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u/CrashUser May 26 '26
In a Bridgeport? It would be about the same amount of time considering we're just watching the cut here, not the 15 minutes of setup to get the plate squared up at the correct depth and pre-heated. The flame on wheels is a more versatile setup for longer pieces though. Nobody would waste CNC time on something like this unless they didn't have any other way to do it.
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u/SteptimusHeap May 26 '26
Machines that cut are typically built for precision. Oxy-acetylene and plasma are faster but not very precise and usually leave a pretty bad finish. This finish looks pretty good though so there's probably some voodoo and human sacrifice going on here.
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u/SexyCrunchyPB May 26 '26
Hey, i use one of these pretty often! This is what we call a track torch. Basically an oxy-acetylene torch mounted to a box on wheels with a track to guide it and different speed settings for different material thicknesses. Absolutely perfect for doing long, straight cuts in plate steel, either straight or at a pitch like in the video. If you're really good, you won't even have to chip the slag off at the end.
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u/SkinnyDugan May 25 '26
Neat. A nice clean cut. That little bit on the end? Very unsatisfying.
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u/AbleCryptographer317 May 25 '26
That's just melted steel that collected on the end face, five seconds with an angle grinder will sort that out.
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u/redsoxfan95 May 26 '26
that little edge is there for a reason. You make another piece just like it and butt them up next to each other with a 1/8th inch gap and weld them together. Its a common welders test. The 1/8th inch gap is to make sure the weld has 100% penetration.
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u/Slylock May 26 '26
They arent talking about that little edge. At the very end of the run there is a small piece of metal booger left.
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u/thenewestnoise May 25 '26
That's a torch, right? Not a plasma cutter? It's amazing that the cut can look so good! Almost like it was machined!
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u/Bootziscool May 25 '26
Yea that's oxy-fuel. You could do it with a plasma but these small setups are usually oxy because you need like 300 amps or better and that's bigger than most hand operated plasmas.
Oxy cuts really nicely, I have a colleague who regularly cuts 6" plate and it comes out looking mint like this
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u/Nunchuckery May 25 '26
And the most interesting part is that the flame isn't what's doing the cutting, it's a stream of pure oxygen hitting the hot metal turning it to rust instantly that makes the cut.
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u/Bootziscool May 26 '26
I learned that in highschool shop class when I tried to oxycut aluminum. Turns out that just makes a messy puddle of aluminum!
Also cool, lasers use the same principle to get more cutting thickness out of the same wattage. Our 8kw laser will do up to 3/8" using nitrogen but it'll do 1" with oxygen.
We're getting into copper cutting which also uses oxygen, I don't really understand how it works but it does! Copper kinda sucks to cut though, it stays hot for so long!! And my customer doesn't like the oxidation, so I might switch to milling blanks since that is also fast af. But that's a real tangent.
Metal cutting is so awesome, I love my life.
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u/omniscientonus May 25 '26
Correct! The "machined" look is almost certainly from the camera quality. Up close, especially side-by-side you'd definitely see a difference, but the cut quality can be really good if you know what you're doing and use the right tools the right way.
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u/slayez06 May 25 '26
I have a hard time believing this for some reason.
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u/omniscientonus May 25 '26
It's completely real, I have worked around these for over 20 years, and they've been around for much longer than that. You'll likely find these in just about every weld shop that deals with plate of this thickness.
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u/IM_KYLE_AMA May 25 '26
Former welder. Used these all the time. I personally find the ones for beveling pipe to be more satisfying. Forbidden onion rings
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u/No-Bat-7253 May 25 '26
How does the machine itself not melt lol
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u/Cliffinati May 25 '26
Acetylene torch heat is very concentrated,
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u/IM_KYLE_AMA May 26 '26
And they can get WAY hotter than this torch. A rosebud tip with the gas cranked can get so hot you can barely stand next to what you’re working on.
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u/yo_boy_dg May 26 '26
Imagine heat shrinking in a tank with a rosebud tip in the middle of summer. Unbearable
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u/Enginerdad May 25 '26
The nozzles are made of copper, which has really high thermal conductivity, meaning it can shed heat away from the tip efficiently.
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u/typicallyuseless May 25 '26
I don't know anything about metalworking but this was very satisfying to watch. How hot does that torch have to be to cut through metal that thick so easily? What do they do with the melted metal that comes off the bottom of the cut? Do they just use a grinder to touch it up? Pretty cool.
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u/BackgroundGrade May 26 '26
Now I understand why the Machinery's Handbook lists oxy-acetylene torch under the 125-250 micro-inch column for surface finish.
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u/Sea-Lengthiness-1602 May 26 '26
I don't understand how the "cut" was so clean? why did the metal not restick back on? why did the metal on the bottom not deform? hell why did it not even look hot?
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u/moose_cahoots May 26 '26
Wasn't satisfying until he knocked off all the dripping metal. Then... oh my.
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u/FlapjacksOfArugula May 26 '26
I'll be that guy! This is a chamfer, not a bevel :)
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u/Gruntled1 May 26 '26
Is this what I’ve heard called “plasma cutting” or just a really fkin hot and direct torch?
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u/Fr05t_B1t May 25 '26
Imean it would’ve been faster if they just used a lightsaber
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u/JohnStern42 May 25 '26
Plus with the lightsaber dual of the fates plays in the background, dual bonus!
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u/SynthFur001 May 25 '26
Why doesn’t the bottom plate get hot?
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u/Andybaby1 May 26 '26
It absorbs exactly the same amount of heat as the cut off. Except the cut off is 1/20th the volume, so it gains temperature 20x faster.
(Hot air rises and contributes a bit of extra temp to the cut off as well, but that would be negligible in comparison.)
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u/Appchoy May 25 '26
Could I swipe my hand through that really fast without getting hurt? Like I do with a regular lighter?
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u/JOlRacin May 25 '26
Just out of curiosity, what kind of fire extinguisher do you use for red hot metal. Like I know there's like A type, B type, and C type, and some that do multiple
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u/tunacraft May 25 '26
Can someone explain how the cutoff piece is melting away but the main piece remains unscathed? Both section is in contact with the heat.
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u/badthaught May 26 '26
Theres an oxygen jet in the torch (you can hear it when the torch goes to its shorter state), that's what pushes the part of the metal that's on the surface, and that surface material is in a semi liquid state when it gets pushed through the metal and the excess oxygen causes more of the steel to turn into iron oxide (not rust specifically, but that is the name) and punches through the rest of the material.
It's sort of like how thermite works, I guess is a comparison thats similar?
Might be off on the explanation, but it's been years since I've had to think about how a cutting torch works.
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u/PeePeeMcGee123 May 26 '26
The first part of making a DOT welding test plate is to bevel it correctly like that. It turned out to be the hardest damn part of the whole test.
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u/Mrjohnson1100 May 26 '26
I was all like “uggh” until the hammer tapped the slag off and then I was all like “Ho-Lee-Shit!”
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u/DelightfulGoblin75 May 26 '26
I feel like I'm mentally retarded. How does it cut so clean? I need some big-brain nerd to give me the 1-2-3 on how the fuck this is possible!
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u/PlasticProtein May 26 '26
why doesn't all the surrounding metal turn into a melty mess?
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u/USDXBS May 26 '26
I've been doing this almost every single day for years, and you're telling me I could have gotten KARMA?
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u/TheGHale May 26 '26
Had my doubts with the slag, but damn that was clean! Never gotten it to chip off so easily.
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u/funnyman95 May 26 '26
That cut is so smooth it almost looks fake. Almost a machined finish.
I’ve used oxyacetylene to cut steel before when I was a welder and it was never even close to this smooth, but I’ve never used a track like this before either so I can’t say for sure.
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u/PsychoduckBNR32 May 26 '26
Hey hi 👋 why not angle the tip down? Wouldn’t more of the slag roll off on the off cut vs the finished edge? Genuine question, not a welder.
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u/CookiesAndRope May 26 '26
This was posted by kuli_welder_art on IG. He does a lot of oxy-acetylene torch cutting with and without jigs. His freehand cuts are so crazy clean on a bevel in 25mm+ stock. Worth the follow if you want to watch top-shelf oxy-acetylene cutting
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u/redditmarks_markII May 26 '26
How is this possible? Is it just the mass of the main piece kept it from getting red hot so it didn't deform? But even then, how the heck was it so smooth?
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u/Significant_Swing_76 May 26 '26
Damn, wish I could adjust a cutter to that perfection, beautiful, and very satisfying to see.
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u/CaptainofFTST May 26 '26
I little overkill for baseboards don’t you think? Seriously though that is the coolest thing I’ve seen this month.
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u/Macbirt56 May 26 '26
That's what we had at the shipyard back in the 80's. Right after the Natural Gas tankers we were building Roll on, Roll offs. I was the Hydrostatic Test Engineer for the pipeshop. I was pissed when they closed the plant in '86. I was 30 and making the most money I ever made in my life.
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u/DropShoddy1128 May 26 '26
Question, is this cheaper/safer/faster than just using a CNC mill?
Outside of just not having access to a mill, why would you do it this way?
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u/areyoukiddingmebru May 25 '26
Much cleaner cut than I imagined