Hello everyone . do you think it is better to use an air dryer with a plasma cutter? Are there any users in the group who have them? thank you for your comeback .
Clean, dry air is very important to consumables lifespan. I don’t have a refrigerated air drier myself. I do have a large cooling loop, water separator, several filters and a desiccant drier/filter just before the plasma cutter. What you have for a compressor, ambient humidity and how hard your compressor works to keep up all come into play.
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As BobD said, there are a lot of variables that come into play when evaluating your system. While attempting to mitigate the moisture problem in my own air system, I’ve found the science behind dry air is a far more involved than I ever imagined it could be. I’ve fought air in my lines since I started REALLY using compressed air and the battle rages on to this day. By really using, I mean it is the main driver behind my metal fab operations. I prefer pneumatic to electric in almost every way when it comes to working metal. I tried water separators, desiccant dryers, long runs of copper, catch lines, tank drain timers, etc etc. I even installed an after-cooler on my compressed air system. None of it has been the solution I’d hoped for. Desiccant is good but if you’re not implementing a number of drying steps beforehand, your beads will be saturated quickly. Even with all the drying done before my desiccant trap, I still find myself changing them out far more often than I’d like. My opinion, and to be clear here, this is all my opinion and personal experience, If you can afford it, an air drier is probably the best way to cut the nonsense and just get dry air.
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