On the plasma table project, one way I came up with to hopefully help promote cleaning of the water…

On the plasma table project, one way I came up with to hopefully help promote cleaning of the water table was to give the slats a lift kit so there was more space for water and small material to flow under the slats and into the drains. That was easily accomplished by welding in some 1/4” thick by 1” wide flat stock on top of the existing slat perches.

Now, this solution creates a problem-now the slats are an additional 1/4” higher, and getting the proper material to water clearance wouldn’t be possible.
Additionally, I wanted the to be able to get the material to actually touch the water for a few different processes-which the factory design actually does not allow.
The solution is to trim about 3/8” of an inch off the height of all the slats.
Simple.
I called a couple of places in Kingman to see if I could the 50 or so slats sheared, which is the fastest, cleanest way to do this task-but nobody could handle it.
So I just needed to do it myself.
I built a simple jig fixture to hold a slat.

The fixture is simple-it consists of a 4×4 piece of square tube to elevate and support the slat, a 1/2” thick piece of flat stock to locate the long axis of the slat, and a small pit of 1/4” thick material to act as a repeatable hard stop for the other axis.
A small pair of toggle clamps hold the slat in place while cutting.
Due to the nature of plasma cutting , the fixture doesn’t need to be very robust. I double checked to make sure it was aligned along the long axis, made a few program changes, and it was time to flood the table and perform a test cut.