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Plasma cutting is incredibly useful. Paired with bending and welding it is often the fastest and cheapest way to build any kind of mechanical structure or enclosure. Results that might take a day on a 3D printer or on a CNC mill can be achieved in minutes on a plasma cutter. Not to mention the cost of sheet metal is a lot cheaper than 3D printer materials or billet for machining. I'm constantly making folded and welded structures with my plasma cutter and every time I have the same problem. I will design a complicated folded part and then when I go to bend it I can't place the bends accurately. I'll spend a lot of time trying to measure them out but the plasma cutter can make any arbitrary shape which can make measuring difficult.
To solve this problem I designed and built a pen plotter head for my plasma cutter. It allows me to first draw all of the bend lines then cut out the part. This gives me perfectly registered bend locations that make folding the parts really easy.
This video details how I designed it and how it works.
These videos usually take a ton of work and a lot of money in tools and materials. I've made a patreon if you're interested in supporting the creation of these projects: / stuffmadehere
Here's some of the tools that I use in this video:
Retractable sharpies: amzn.to/2XLNYzI
Air solenoid valves: amzn.to/3apr57Y
Pneumatic Cylinder: amzn.to/3exLbjG
Vise brake (highly recommend): amzn.to/3akCkhZ
Wera allen keys 1000x better than el cheapos: amzn.to/2KlCb36
Wera allen keys (english): amzn.to/2RQUxNG
Hypertherm powermax 45xp with machine torch: amzn.to/2zfoyAv
Hypertherm fine cut consumables (great for sheet metal) amzn.to/34SjMom
100mm linear stage for plasma Z axis - easier than building: amzn.to/3cAeEb3
Downdraft fans - these things chooch!: amzn.to/2VKFbM5
The best marker ever. Always in my pocket: amzn.to/3ewHGtL
Drag chains: amzn.to/2VFDXSf
"computer startup sound" sound from freesound.org/people/bigmanjo... is licensed under CC BY 3.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/...