Who knows plasma cutters?

[burn_your_money]

I need to remove floors from shipping containers. Today we used torches and it went ok but I'd like to try something that doesn't burn so much of the wood and hopefully not shoot so many sparks all over the place. I'm cutting off about 3/4" heads that are counter sunk about 1/8". I've never used a palsma cutter and was wondering if anyone could comment on how effective it would be for this job. Speed and cost are the main considerations. Since the sparks are going to be shooting back at the cutter will I be going through a whole pile of tips?
Also, can a plasma cutter cut through painted materials?

[air-cooled or diesel]

plasma cutters come a couple of ways; 1 is with compressed air(I think) and nitrogen(or maybe it was nitrogen only); the other uses just compressed air. it has a lot of sparks, but less and tends to be finer sparks than a torch. if the cutter grounds to the torch it will cut anything, if it -only- grounds to work, get some paint off. iirc you can get ones that both ground to torch & work. its been a while. as far a gouging it could work as with a torch you can cut thru a solid piece of metal; just sparks come back and up at you until you cut all the way thru. as far as tips; I doubt pac (plasma arc cutting) is used as a gouge. im sure it would work, make sure you have a cutting 5 shield when using. and normal protection, like jeans, jacket/thick cotton shirt, and such.
you can zip thru work compared to a oxyfuel torch.
the only thing about cutting thru paint it will make you sick after a little while. and some fire hazard too.

[shorttimer]

I purchased a Hyperthem plasma cutter several years ago. It was touted as being the best brand to buy. I got one of the smaller units because we were going to use it for light material. At the time my room mate was a super pro welder for a very well known MC pipe fabricator. We had nothing but trouble with it & was probably the worst tool purchase ever for me. We set it up by the book & if I had to do all over again I would have the people, who sold it, give a demonstration by a knowledgeable plasma user before making the purchase.

[sdubfid]

I have had 2 hypertherms and would buy another.  I had a cnc plasma side business and know many other shops with hypertherm and no complaints.  There is no benefit to a torch setup unless you need to add heat to metal for bending purposes.  Plasma is safer, easier, more efficient and more versatile.  Post a pic of the work you need to do.

[bbob203]

What are you using them for? House?

[burn_your_money]

Some containers will be used for dorms, and others for bathhouses, shower houses and a laundry mat.

Here is our first one, this will be a bathhouse. 7 toilets and 3 showers are going in.


And these are the boards that we need to take up.



I haven't seen a single welder brand that I recognize over here, let alone plasma cutters. Everything's silly expensive too, the cheapest MIG welder I can find over here is $1000.

[air-cooled or diesel]

how did you do with this? i suppose with painted bolts, finding a ground can be some difficult. shaving the heads with pac should have gone pretty quick.

[burn_your_money]

We used various methods, some of the bolts would unscrew but usually we would only get 3 or 4 out before breaking the bit. I wish would have brought some good bits over with me. Torches worked well and we even used a chisel to knock the heads off in one of the containers because they were a smaller diameter. I was also able to climb under some of the containers and pound the bolts up and out. That was very fast but very difficult to get into position.

We were not able to find a plasma cutter at a reasonable price. An angle grinder worked very well for cutting the sides of the container though.

[bajacalal]

This is entirely off topic but is that what Ontario looks like (in the background). I wouldn't expect it to be so dry looking I guess, it looks like northern Nevada (not that that's a bad thing).

[burn_your_money]

Nope, that's Israel. My wife and I were just there for 3 months.

[Blocksmith]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the nature of what needs to come loose, but from looking at those boards I'm assuming that you're needing to remove a ton of bolts that hold the wood down to the floor of the container; is an impact wrench not an option for this sort of work? Or is everything too rusted for that?