Understanding Plasma Cutting Consumable Life: Quality Limits, Wear, and Electrode Design (2)
Complete copper electrode:
It is normal electrode.Pressing hafnium into tellurium copper body and finish machining.
Silver tube electrode:
As is well known,silver has better conductivity and thermal conductivity.Some manufacturers press hafnium and silver tube into tellurium copper body and finish machining.
Brazing electrode:
Put silver basic filler and hafnium into the hole of tellurium copper body firstly.Then put them into vacuum oven.During the heating,the silver basic filler will full fill the space between hafnium and copper body.After cooling and solidify,the semi-product can be finished machining.This kind electrode has some issue.The first issue,the copper body is soft after brazing.When assemble on the torch,if the operator assemble too tight,the thread will be crack.The second issue,it is not easy to control the temperature in the oven and there be some gap between hafnium and copper body during cooling and solidify.Because there will be several hundreds piece for one batch in the oven.The lifetime of electrode is not stable.The third issue,when the electrode burn out,it will explode badly and easily burn the water tube and torch.
New brazing electrode:
Put silver basic filler and hafnium into the hole of ceramic copper chunky firstly.Put the ceramic copper chunky into oven,heating,cooling and solidify.Then welding ceramic copper chunky and tellurium copper together and finish machining.comparing brazing electrode,there are two advantage.One is solving the copper soft issue.Another is that ceramic copper can absorb silver basic filler so that increasing bonding strength.But according to my experience,the lifetime is still not stable and explode badly.
Silver head electrode:
Hypertherm use friction welding to weld silver and copper together.They apply a patent for it.Pressing hafnium into silver body and finish machining.Some manufacturer find another way,that is vacuum electron beam welding to weld silver and copper together.Pressing hafnium into silver body and finish machining.
Silver chunky electrode:
Some manufacture can use Hyperthem patent, vacuum electron beam welding machine is too expensive,the silver head of electrode is too big and too expensive.They make a variant.Press silver chunky into tellurium copper body and press hafnium into silver chunky together,then finish machining.There will be a risk.Sometimes silver chunky is not tight bonding with copper body so that it will be leaking.
Silver surface electrode:
Some manufacture use vacuum electron beam welding to weld small silver chunky,based on silver chunky electrode.In this case,this kind electrode has best price and best lifetime.
Complete silver electrode:
There are only a little electrode use complete silver.Normally,the manufacturer will use 92.5% or 90% silver rod to produce.In this case,the price is too high.
You can use these silver to make a silver ring.