Not a Woodworking Question...Machinists Out There?

[Bill Brehme]

Plasma cutter! Beeooowhipp... DONE!!!

[David DeCristoforo]

"Do take care to insure that all the specs of metal are fully "gone"..."

Another answer to that post about what to do with that great big compressor?

[Daniel Simon]

I removed my post because I didn't carefully read the size. Sorry.

[Scott Rollins]

Sheet metal snips will do the job quickly and cheaply. They run about $10-20 from the big box stores. I used these successfully to cut out for HVAC piping in plenums. Just cut on the line-carefully.

[Tom Walz]

You might try Practical Machinist

http://www.practicalmachinist.com/cg...?ubb=get_daily

That's the link for the daily active topics

[David Epperson]

Harbor freight has an air powered nibbler that would probably make short work of this without generating all the metal chips and powder.

[Roland Chung]

If you haven't already decided on how to do this, check out a forum for computer mods. These geniuses routinely cut up alum and steel cases and turn them into works of art. I think that they use the dremmel tool quite a bit. They do things by hand that look like a machine produced it.

If you use oil to lubricate and cool, try not to get it on the insulation of the wires inside. Oil can degrade plastic.

[David G Baker]

Grenlee punch is the way to go if the front and back of the metal is easily accessible. They can be rented. Depending on the grade of stainless, if the metal gets hot from drilling, it gets real hard very fast and will melt a drill bit like butter. If it is drilled use a very slow speed and lots of pressure and lubricant.

[David DeCristoforo]

Well I dug out my "cheapo nibbler" to see if it would cut stainless the same thickness as what I thought I had to deal with. It did although it took some force. Thinking I could deal with this I took the top off the machine and saw that the front panel where the hole is is actually two thicknesses of steel...the stainless front and a sceond layer of thicker (though most likely much milder) steel. So now I'm looking at a good 1/16 -3/32 of steel to cut through. I really don't want to have to tear this thing down just to enlarge a hole so I am going to try a course grinding bur and see how far I get.