With cutting and piercing times that are up to 8.5 times faster than oxyfuel, plasma offers significant productivity gains even before considering how much less time is spent on preheating and secondary operations.
The tables below compare the cut speeds for Hypertherm's HySpeed, HyPerformance, and Powermax systems to the cut speeds for oxyfuel on 1/2" (12 mm) mild steel. As you can see, at this thickness, Hypertherm offers systems that range from just slightly faster than oxyfuel to 8.5 times as fast.
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Cut speeds on 1/2" mild steel
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Cut speeds on 12 mm mild steel
With the introduction of the HyPerformance HPR400XD, Hypertherm offers production pierce capacity all the way to 2" (50 mm) at speeds substantially faster than oxyfuel. Want to see how a Hypertherm plasma system would perform on your application? Click here for a chart of Hypertherm's plasma cutting products and their speeds on a variety of metal thicknesses.