Hello guys and girls I’m new to the forum. just wondering has anyone had luck cutting 1/4 mild steel?
I just cut some 0.225" stainless steel the other day with pretty good results. If you’re looking for high accuracy, I don’t think you’ll find it. The draft/taper was less than I expected, but it’s definitely noticeable.
I think one of the main reasons why it’s so difficult is the piercing time - the Wazer just can’t pierce thick steel easily. If you can pre-drill the pierce locations, start cuts off the workpiece, or otherwise work around piercing, you should be okay. I ended up calculating it would take 180 seconds of piercing time for this thickness, and I have no idea if it would work.
See the attached file. These are the cuts used on the 0.225" SS for a rectangular piece of stock. All the cuts start on the edge of the material, so pierce time is essentially irrelevant.
I used 0.38872 in/min as the cut speed with a 1-second pierce time (which is arbitrary since it wasn’t necessary). I manually started each cut at 80 or 90% of that speed until I was sure it was fully cutting the material, then brought it back up to 100%.
I had to finish a spot or two with a band saw where it didn’t fully cut and then spend some time filing the edges of the cuts. It was a lot easier than having my CNC guys figure out how to mill it (and saved precious CNC time).
Example 0.225 SS Cut.DXF (36.3 KB)
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hey Andrew, thank you for the info. This really does help. I do appreciate your time. I’ll give it a try. I’ll keep you posted.
Thx.