Poor Man's Plasma/torch cutting of pattens

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Has anyone here tried to build a scaling/pattern "mechanism" for a plasma or torch cutting head?  I'm talking about a poor man's way of cutting a pattern out with a follower which rides allong a pattern.  I remember the old drafting tool for stenciling which had a couple levers which one side followed grooved text patterns and the other end scaled it up to draw on the drawing.  I was thinking something like this could be made to make a crude setup to cut plasma patterns, instead of using a computer controlled plasma machine.  Any ideas?  Think it would work?
Reply:i bet you coudl do something like that. it seems fairly simple, but i think it may be troublesome to try and make a template for every design. if you want, let me knwo what design you want made up, I can draft it on the computer, and then you cantake it to Kinko's and have them plot it out on a large sheet of paper (I think they can go about 4' wide and as long as you want on a sheet of paper). plus, using the paper template, you can save it for later use and not take up a ton of room with it. i really like the drafting-tracer thingy idea though too. i guess it mainly depends on what you are looking at doing with it. if it's just a one shot deal, or once in a great while, i would go with the printed template, but if you are making multiple pieces of the same shape on a regular basis, i would reccommend the tracer.hope that helps,Andy
Reply:Thanks for the offer to help with CAD, but I also have CAD here at work I can use.  I'm really working on "onesy twosy" stuff at my shop at home, so I don't mind if is inefficient somewhat.
Reply:A place I worked at had a machine that would follow a white cardboard template.  That was the only way it worked.  This was a long time ago.DavidReal world weldin.  

When I grow up I want to be a tig weldor.   


Reply:It's called a pantograph.  You can adjust the lever system through a variety of holes to scale up a pattern.  I used to have one made for wood routers. You may want to take a look at one to copy or modify for plasma.  You could make your own.  They're just drilled bars, a couple of pivot points and a tool holder. The router unit really didn't cost much and was sold by Sears to make address signs and stuff with patterns of the alphabet and numbers.Hobart 140 Handler w/ gasHyperTherm Powermax 380 Plasmaoxy/acetylene
Reply:It uses 2 parallel bars to retrace a design, it's a pretty good design before CNC.
Reply:Mark460, You need an Ultra-graph, was built by Heath, now it looks like esab is it:http://products.esabna.com/EN/home/p...nes_ultragraphAnyone recall the X-Y table builder that sells, or used sell a kit and plans for a pantograph? There are used ones around.
Reply:check here http://www.torchmate.com/pantograph.htm they have plans for sale also look around the net theres some stuff out there i was researching this before

350P 30A spool gun cut master 51  syncro 250 other stuff " take a dog off the street and make him prosper and he will not bite you sad the same cannot be said for man" i didnt use punctuation just to piss you off
Reply:That was it, Torch Mate!I've never used one with plasma, I was going to try to substitute a plasma torch for the Oxy fuel torch, someone here posted that the drive speed on an O/F model, is too fast for plasma.Finished cuts are slightly larger than the patterns, because you add the radius of the follower, minus 1/2 the kerf, to the pattern dimensions when tracing. Does that make sense?
Reply:Williams Low Buck tools used to sell one- it was a cheap pantograph for flame cutting.I dont know why, but he has discontinued it, but he still has the web page up.http://www.lowbucktools.com/flamecut.html
Reply:we have an old tracer plas table, its for sale if anyone intrested.Have we all gone mad?
Reply:Huh... I have one of those Sears router duplicators things, still new in the box, found at a yard sale for free. They didn't know what it was. I may just try adapting that to my plasma torch