• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.23-33
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• 1987

Plasma arc cutting is a fusion cutting process in which a gas constricted arc is employed to produce high temperature, high velocity jet at the workpiece. Even though the plasma arc cutting has been wid¬ely used in the industry, very little work has been done on the analysis of the process. In this paper, the kerf width was numerically analyzed by soving the temperature distribution in base metal under consideration of the latent heat effect. In modelling the heat flow problem, the heat intensity of the plasma arc was assumed to have a Gaussion distribution in the transverse direction and expone¬ntially decreasing in the thickness direction. The thermal efficiency and the heat input ratio of the top surface were experimentally deterimned for various thickness and cutting conditions, and used in numerical calculation of the kerf width. The experimental results were in eonsiderabely good agreement with the theoretically predicted kerf width.

• Proceedings of the KWS Conference
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• 1990.04a
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• pp.64-67
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• 1990

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.60-69
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• 1990

Plasma arc cutting is a fusion cutting process in which a gas-constricted arc is employed to produce a high-temperature, high-velocity plasma jet on the workpiece. This process provides some advantages such as increased cutting velocity, excellent working accuracy and the ability to cut special materials (widely used stainless steels and Al-alloys, for example), when compared with iconventional oxyfuel gas cutting. From the view point of price and reliability of the power source, plasma arc cutting has also some distinct advantages over laser beam cutting. High-speed machines with NC or CNC systems are needed for the plasma arc or laser beam cutting process, while for oxyfuel gas cutting, low-speed machines with copying templates or optical-shape tracking sensors can be applied. The low price and high flexibility of the microprocessor arc contributing more and more the application of CNC system in the plasma arc cutting process, as in other manufacturing fields. From these points of view, a microprocessor-based plasma arc cutting system was developed by using a reference-pulse system, and its performance was tested. The interpolating routines were programmed in the assembly language for saving the memory volume and improving the compouting speed, which has an intimate relationship with the available cutting velocity.