Technically speaking, the kind of cut and welded metal art that I make is referred to as Direct Metal Sculpture. This type of metalworking is in contrast to brass or bronze sculptures which are typically created using an indirect method such as the lost wax casting method.

The pieces that I create involve cutting, hammering, welding, shaping, and otherwise directly acting upon the metal to manipulate it into its final shape. In other words, there is no pouring of molten materials.

Some people have asked me about the actual process so I’ve taken the liberty of documenting the creation of a couple of pieces.
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Over the past two days, I completed the setup of my new CNC Plasma cutting machine (also see PlasmaCAM Part 1), and man is it awesome!

After physically constructing the cutting table, I needed to do a little wiring in my Hypertherm PowerMax 1000 plasma torch so that it would interface with the control box of the PlasmaCAM in order to allow the machine to turn the torch on and off. The instruction video had me really worried because it kept talking about needing to have a professional electrician install the wiring and then perform a huge batch of tests in order to ensure everything was OK.
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Today a dream came true. For about two years now I’ve been planning, comparing, procrastinating… but today my new CNC Plasma Cutting machine arrived.

After comparing a wide variety of machines including DynaCNC, PlasmaCAM, Practical CNC, TorchMate, Dynatorch, and MultiCam, I settled on the PlasmaCAM for the following reasons:
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