Long story short my Hypertherm 1250 blew up so I replaced it with a new Powermax 85 and this time I got it with a machine torch. I needed a new/better mount for my older Bulltear Table in order to go from the hand torch I was using to the new machine torch. I have heard of several machine torches snapping the torch body in pieces from collisions so I figured why not do it right from the start? I did some searching around and saw a few homemade breakaways and the Snap-n-cut and Dynatorch breakaway mounts. The latter 2 are expensive for what they are in my book so I made my own version. I ordered some Neodymium Magnets from ebay, ordered some bullet nose dowel pins from Enco and sorted through the Aluminum scrap bin at my local Metal Supermarket and found 2 chunks that would work perfect and lastly some bolts from Ace Hardware. Total materials comes out to just under $30! Lots better than $200+!!
I drew up my idea in Solidworks to fine-tune it and then spent some quality time on my Bridgeport machining the components out. I have tested it out and it works great, it comes apart crashing front to back and side to side and the magnets are strong enough to keep it in place while touching off on the material. The dowel pins auto-align the torch perfectly and as a bonus to change consumables the torch comes right off which makes changes much easier.
Now to move on to the next project - adding cable carriers to my table and getting rid of my 'boom' setup.
Here are a few pictures of what I came up with-
