Thermal Dynamics Cutmaster A80 reliability and consumable life

[Kj6bab]

I recently purchased my first thermal dynamics plasma cutter, I never sought out a certain brand it was always whatever deal I could find. I recently purchased a cutmaster a80 from offerup for $300 that was advertised as not working, it was cheap enough that I was willing to gamble with trying to fix it and if not I knew I could part it out for what I was into it for. It ended up having a bad pressure regulator and the pressure sensor was clogged with corrosion so I replaced those and then I discovered it had a short in the torch lead about 2 feet from the torch. Luckily I got a second broken torch with it when I bought it as the previous owner crashed and broke the end off of the torch shortly after they purchased their plasma table. I was able to piece together a perfect torch from the two of them and now it is working perfectly.

I just wonder how much life is left in this unit since it was used pretty heavily in a small fabrication business and I am sure it has a million hours of use on it. It is a usa made black and blue model from 2011 which I have heard are better then the newer ones. I was debating on trying to sell it while it is a working unit or just running it until it quits.

I am also curious about consumable life, when I purchased it I got 6 bags of the 9-8232 electrodes amd 6 bags of the 9-8210 60 amp nozzles and 3 start cartridges. I started wondering if the consumable life is so bad you have to stock so many of them. It will probably get 1/10th of the use in my shop then it did in the previous owners shop.

[arnegrant]

We have an A80 and an A120 in our shop.

I figure cutting up one 4'x8' sheet of 1/2 inch plate into 18x plates with 12 holes each (216 holes) takes one nozzle at 80 amps.

Sometimes I run one electrode per two tips, but steel is so expensive if it is wore at all I have been doing 1 electrode per sheet.

This is what I keep for consumables. I order more when a bin starts getting low.

I save the decent used consumables for cutting fix it parts.

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We run the table all day a few days a week.

Things run until they don't.

Torches have more issues than the actual units, in my experience.

[adbuch]

This is all great information from both Kj6bab and arnegrant! We can gain some insight here for how many consumables the real productions shops go thru running these large jobs out there in the "real world". This is a far cry from what some of us hobbyists use with our occasional cutting.
David