RepRap Steel tubing plasma cutter

I am part of an FSAE race car team at my college and we pretty much have to build a race car from scratch. We don't have a very large budget or a lot of time to actually build the car, so I am looking at ways we could possibly speed things up for next year.

It takes weeks just to notch all of the steel tubes to fit together nicely. I have seen CNC plasma cutters with rotation capability out there, but the are $2XXX!!!! just for the hardware!!!

So I would like to build a 2-axis CNC plasma cutter for tubes. One axis will control the pipe rotation and the other to control the position of the plasma cutter head. Another motor will be needed to adjust the height before starting the cut but will not be controlled during cutting.

here is one [www.precisionplasmallc.com]

I assumed it will be very similar controls to the Egg-bot without one of the degrees of freedom.

Anyone have any suggestions!? Anything I should watch out for? Has this already been done?

I have zero experience in anything like that, but I think making a plasma cutter like that is a whole project itself?

Maybe you should look for a trick for notching those, for instance this search, be sure to consider if/how it applies to your case. You could also a design that takes fewer notches, or look for a business that might do it for you, or something.

(PS: the website page you linked to either made a mistake or has a anti-javascriptblocker feature :/)

I would plan on using a regular plasma cutter rather than designing a plasma cutter from scratch. I would simply design the cnc controls. I just checked the link I posted and it still appears to work.

I was in my universities FSAE team for 2 years and I feel your pain. Notching tubes by hand is the worst.
Those guys are right though, building a cutter from scratch is a project all in its self, you can get simple tube notches pretty cheap. printing out the tube profile and tracing it helps too.

Before reading this I had no idea what tube notching was, so I may be far, far off the mark when I ask:
Wouldn't something like this be easier to make?

---

Realizer- One who realizes dreams by making them a reality either by possibility or by completion. Also creating or renewing hopes of dreams.
"keep in mind, even the best printer can not print with the best filament if the user is the problem." -Ohmarinus

Not sure if you are still into this but I built my own table about 2 years ago, feel free to look at the pictures here - [linuxcnc.org] and ask any questions.