Reed runs Farmside Metal Art in Bear Lake, making metal signs through the use of computer numerical control plasma cutting. A CNC cutter is a thermal cutting tool that uses a plasma torch to cut ...

But “cheap” and “good” don’t always intersect on a Venn diagram, and even when they do, not every plasma cutter is suitable for use on the spanking new CNC table you’re building.

Metalworking has always been very much a “mixed method” art. Forging ... Adding in fancy new tools like CNC plasma cutting and computer-aided drafting doesn’t change that much, although ...