TORCHMATE CNC GANTRY KITS Upload our Free Catalog or Order a Catalog by U.S. Mail Torchmate CNC gantry kits are available in two types.  Our high-end model is the Torchmate II, shown immediately below.  The Torchmate II Kit uses an extruded aluminum gantry structure and a precision linear motion Y axis and carriage.  The gantry unit comes about 95% complete, and requires only a few minor tasks before you bolt it together.   You fabricate the simple rail system and material support table from locally purchased steel tubing and cold roll bar.  The instructions make it possible to complete the entire project in the course of a week-end.  Click here for details on project.   A completed Torchmate II gantry kit looks as good and performs as well as machines costing $50,000 or more.  It is purposely over-designed so that with the addition of our optional Z (vertical) axis, it can be used as a CNC router, drill, or engraver.  Both the electronics and software are fully 3-D capable right out of the box. The standard Torchmate CNC gantry kit is our entry level unit.  While it lacks the physical rigidity necessary for routing or drilling, it performs CNC plasma cutting as well as machines costing five times more. The standard Torchmate Kit requires more fabrication time on the customer's part than the Torchmate II, above.  The kit includes everything needed other than the lengths of steel tubing necessary to build the gantry, the rail system, and the material support table, as shown above.  This steel will be purchased locally to save shipping costs.   Completion of the kit will require approximately $300 worth of owner-supplied steel, and an average of 40 hours completion time.  The standard Torchmate Y axis consists of a fabricated carriage using needle bearing cam followers to grip the four sides of a cold roll steel beam.   The Torchmate is shown here with our optional torch height controller installed.  It automatically establishes and holds the correct distance between the torch tip and work.   It is useful, as it is impossible to level a 4' x 8' sheet so that the 1/8" distance is maintained over the entire plate.  This is even more true of thinner metal that reacts to the heat.

Now you can have a cnc shape cutting machine that equals the performance of
units costing $50,000 or more for less than the cost of many plasma cutters.  We
sell our machines in kit form, which can be quickly completed by the average
metal fabricator with common shop tools.  A milling machine can be used in
securing the drive racks, but is not essential.
 
The cnc controls and driver software are perfectly suited for cnc shape cutting
machine work, and the unit is in use with both plasma cutters and/or oxy-fuel across
the country, and in 17 foreign countries.

Metal art and metal sculpture dealers are a big part of our customer base, as
are street rod chassis and frame builders, metal fabrication shops, ornamental
and architectural iron shops, sheetmetal fabricators, and industrial arts teachers.
Shapes that once took hours to cut by hand and grind smooth can be produced
effortlessly and without the need for further processing.

Another benefit of cnc shape cutting that is hard to explain is the stress that
it removes from the operator.  Since it is next to impossible for the computer to
make the kinds of errors that are common in manual cutting, every piece in a
production run is perfect--and effortless!  Operator fatigue is eliminated.

There is no need for a highly skilled employee to operate the unit.  One of
your people can create the shape on a computer in your office, and carry it
out to another person in the shop on a floppy disk.

We recommend using a low end Pentium computer to operate the CNC
machine, and protecting your newer Pentium from the conditions in the shop.