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Blew $150 on a cheap plasma cutter from an online auction that died after 2 cuts | Boilermakers - Guest Forum

Blew $150 on a cheap plasma cutter from an online auction that died after 2 cuts

It sparked out on a 1/4 inch plate and now I'm sitting here with a useless brick wondering if anyone else has had luck with those sub-$200 import cutters or should I just save up for a Miller?

3 comments

3 Comments

hugo_singh4mo ago

$150 for a plasma cutter is basically just buying a fancy sparkler with a handle, that's not surprising at all. Those import units use scrap transformer cores and won't even hold a stable arc on clean 1/8 steel. Miller or Hypertherm are the only games worth playing, but even a $800 Primeweld will smoke those auction specials all day. Your money is better spent on a quality used unit from a real brand that parts are still available for. Fixing that brick will probably cost what you paid for it if you can even find someone who stocks the parts.

blake4323mo ago

Flip it around and ask how many of those $150 units actually work fine for years in a hobby shop. I bought one of those "fancy sparklers" three years ago for $120 and it's still cutting 1/4 inch plate just fine. Not saying it's as good as a Hypertherm, but for someone who uses it twice a month in their garage it's a no brainer. The parts availability argument falls apart when the whole machine costs less than a single consumable pack for a Miller. Plus if it does die in five years, I can buy three more before I hit the price of a used name brand unit. Sometimes the math just works different depending on what you need.

jenkins.wade4mo ago

And that's the real kicker with those cheap units, once they pop you're basically stuck with a paperweight. Even if you could find the parts, the labor to swap them out would be more than the thing's worth. Better off just tossing it and saving for something that actually has a warranty and customer support.