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I did a thing: It's a trellis arch for roses and such. It is much too strong even for people doing pullups in it which I know will happen at some point. I hope it will rust slowly and gracefully which should contrast nicely with the plants. Bro and I have a workshop in his large garage, and some years back we finally invested in a proper MIG welder. It's a three-phase Lincoln that I didn't need to turn anywhere near all the way up for this project. I did the rebar bends in a vice and needed the oxy torch to correct a fuckup or two but I'm pretty happy with the outcome.
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Jul 14, 2022 15:20
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Ambassadorofsodomy posted:Is there any reason to heat up parts with a torch before welding them? No immediate practical reason that comes to my mind with the possible exception that you're running an undersized stick welder for the job since pre-heat should increase your penetration a little at a given amount of amps I guess. If it was cast iron it would be different since it really likes to crack from uneven heat. If it's something like a massive chunk of aluminium which is a much better thermal conductor than mild steel it can heat sink away the energy from a TIG torch faster than you can add it, then pre-heating can also be necessary or at least make life much easier. Stainless is the opposite and doesn't conduct heat well at all.
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Jul 15, 2022 08:04
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When bro and I were lathe shopping we just looked at what was available and tried to study up on the models that were on sale, seeing if spare parts were still available and so on. This is northern Europe so it's probably not applicable to your situation - we wanted something with a metric lead screw so old English iron was out though they were plentiful. We eventually picked up an old Czechoslovakian machine with lots of accessories including a good digital readout retrofit from a gunsmith who'd used it mostly for cutting and threading gun barrels. It's a TOS Trencin SN40C which can swing 16". It has a 7.5kW motor I think which is right around 10hp. It's way, way more machine than we've ever needed but there was room for it in the shop and it was a good deal though a real pain to move. The communist bloc exported lots of (for them) high quality machinery to whomever would buy them for hard currency back in the day that are still around and pretty well regarded in general.
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Aug 23, 2022 10:54
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A different approach would be to start with a junkyard leaf spring. Same kind of carbon steel as a coil spring, possibly easier to get into a useful shape. Can be roughed out with a grinder or something. As for heating (for making steel malleable or for hardening) it doesn't need to be as complicated as an oxy torch, though these are excellent if you have one laying around. It's easy enough to get steel good and hot with a setup as simple as a hole in the ground, a lenght of steel pipe, any kind of fan (vaccuum cleaner or whatever) and some charcoal. Anvils can be improvised too in a pinch. Beating on hot steel is fun though and you should try it IMO.
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Sep 21, 2022 06:55
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Hell yeah. Hope it turns out to be in decent condition overall. That seems like an extremely basic little unit but any lathe is vastly superior to no lathe. I'd hazard I could have gotten good enough results on almost all turning jobs I've ever done on a machine like that. Very rarely do you actually need the big/powerful/fancy stuff as a hobbyist.
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Sep 27, 2022 16:49
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Ziggy Smalls posted:Without proper pre/post heat that weld would be brittle as hell. If you're welding a bit of carbon steel to a mild steel handle you're annealing the hard end to hell and back, so you'd still have to harden and temper the carbon piece regardless to get a useful edge, right? It's been a long while since I welded anything with a torch but I don't recall those welds to be brittle, softer than ordinary argon mix shielded MIG welds in fact. Do you mean this property is a function of the filler rod used or the base materials being fused? I've never welded anything high carbon so these are honest questions out of ignorance and curiosity.
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Sep 28, 2022 10:46
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Best possible outcome then.
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Sep 28, 2022 12:44
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So i built this really beefy industrial looking scissor lamp for my living room a while back since I couldn't buy what I wanted. It's all in blued steel except for the axle shaft sitting bolted to the wall and the lampshade which I bought painted. The bolts holding it together are regular m12x1.5 hex bolts that I faced off and drilled out with a 7mm bit in the lathe (for the cable routing). I put most of these to the oxy torch to get rid of the zink and anneal them for easier drilling before blueing them. Others just got an acid bath but these were pretty hard to drill out. They all turned out alright in the end but not as good the other steel parts since polishing them right before blueing was a bridge too far - I don't have great equipment for the job. Not yet at least. The thing is that the lamp turned out great. It can be improved of course but it looks cool and is genuinely really good at being a lamp - mine has good reach around the sofa and coffee table and tucks away nicely when not in use. I'm thinking about building a few more and see if I can sell them for profit, just as a side hustle workshop alibi sort of thing. If I'm building more I want to streamline the process a fair bit to cut down on labor. Cold rolled steel this time and a few jigs made, for example. Some new tools are likely as well. I know there are bolts with a nice black finish at the specialty fastener store I sometimes frequent. I believe these are generally stronger than regular zinked bolts from the regular hardware stores. Would it be terribly painful to drill such bolts out for the cable routing? If so, can they be annealed without destroying the finish? It would be a small thing to just buy a few bolts and try it, and it might come to that, but I figured I might just ask the internet first.
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Nov 6, 2022 17:19
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Yeah, i figured. So what I want is cheese grade M12 hex bolts in black. Might not be available. Still, if I can source just washers and nuts already finished in black at a reasonable price it's still 4/5 fastener parts I don't have to worry about (provided the surface finish is reasonably close in the end) so that might still be very much worth doing
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Nov 6, 2022 17:44
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Sagebrush posted:Is this a black oxide (matte) finish, or a black nickel/black chrome (shiny) plating? It's the matte finish I'm thinking of. The lamp I have at home is cold blued with the common brand sold by a gunsmith. As I understand it that's just black oxide too. I was worried about corrosion and wear, but it's held up fine (indoors of course). It's a very attractive finish compared to paint IMO which is why I chose it. I'm a total bluing newbie but I know there are other finishes, some that go on hot. There are probably finishes better suited for the job worth looking into.
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Nov 6, 2022 18:01
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my big skillet would require a ginormous lathe and I don't think it would chuck up easily even if the four jaw was big enough. I'd sooner give the mill a try. Glass stovetops suck unless they're induction but those don't care too much about flatness for nice heat transfer. Last week I did some antique bike frame surgery and torch bent some 25x2mm steel tube and it struck me again that I really need to get one of those many-flamed non-focused tips for general oxy/acetylene heating ("rosebud" maybe?, they're called "shower tips" in the local lingo) but they're rare as hen's teeth and cost a hundo new and never show up on the normal used stuff places where I can easily get a box full of welding tips for a few tenners. Anyway when I was done with the frame stripping and repairs I coated it in POR-15 (which I had to order from the one vendor in country that sells it) and I really liked how it came out, almost seemed powder coated after three applications. Then I proceeded with a generic slow drying metal enamel paint as topcoat for UV protection that made the frame look like poo poo again but at least it's not cracked or rusty anymore. Time will tell how well it lasts.
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Jan 14, 2023 14:14
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I don't know how my MIG welder works.  It has two knobs for the power setting, the left A/B knob and the right 1-10 knob. The manual I've manage to find just states: Welding Voltage Changing Switch: POWERTEC 200C has one switch (10 steps). The POWERTEC 250C and 300C have 2 switches (2 and 10 steps). " What I don't know and what I want to know is which setting corresponds with 11. Say I'm using A/10 and I want one more unit of oompf. I don't think it's B/1 because that' seems to clearly be less juice. IIRC B/3 appears about the same, but I want to know for sure so I can mark it with a sharpie or something so I'll remember between my infrequent uses of this otherwise great machine. Does anyone know, or know how I can find out? Would testing the thing with a multimeter tell me what I want to know for example, or is there a better manual I haven't found?
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Feb 22, 2023 08:31
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That's exactly the type of chart I want. It's not entirely impossible that B/1 actually is 11. Thinking back I'm pretty sure I have a bad habit of upping the wire feed whenever I crank the A/B knob since HOLY poo poo I'M IN SECOND GEAR OF THE THREE-PHASE BEAST poo poo'S ABOUT TO GET REAL. Almost like flinching when shooting a gun or something. I'll do some actual methodical testing on monday when I have some shop time scheduled. Did I mention that I'm a very bad at welding? This machine is way better than I deserve but it was too good a deal to pass on. Unlike the old chintzy single-phase machine this one is never disappointing except when I need to move it around.
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Feb 22, 2023 13:23
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So there's this broken old machine vise I'd like to repair and use on the drill press table which would be a huge upgrade over the current chinesium one if I can pull it off. One of the bolt hole tabs in the base is broken off, I don't have the missing piece. Don't know which kind of cast metal I''m dealing with, but let's assume it's cast iron. I have a MIG, a TIG/stick and oxyacetylene available. My best guess of how to proceed it is to make a new tab out of mild steel, buy the most suitable rod/flux I can find at the friendly local welding supply store that caters to amateurs (possibly Meltolit ES942 from googling) and try to braze it on, probably with the torch rather than the TIG. Do any of you knowledgeable people have a better/less dumb idea?
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Mar 8, 2023 05:57
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Leperflesh posted:Depends on how pretty or ugly it can look. One option is to just cut a length of threaded rod and weld it directly to the broken off stub, then put that through the hole on the bench and nut it from underneath. Another is to make a square plate with holes that align to the existing holes, make a new hole somewhere near the old stub, and then weld the plate to the base of the vise. Function is everything in this case, I care little if any for pretty. The stub from where the tab was is useless so it's coming off regardless. I'm reluctant to weld cast iron unless I absolutely have to, but an alternative to brazing on a new tab would be to mill a clean surface on the side with the broken tab and drill/tap some holes into the body of the vise and bolt on an L-shaped bracket instead of a tab. Come to think of it I have some beefy square steel stock that could be milled into this and I wouldn't have to buy anything at all so maybe this is the easiest way forward. (also I have done very little brazing of any kind, and never in anything this substantial, or any cast iron at all so I'm not super confident in my abilities here) Symmetry between the holes that bolts the vice to the drill press table would be nice of course but not crucial. The vise is old and well used but it was bought dirt cheap since it's non-functional. Any repair that can put it back in service is fine, even if it's sort of destructive.
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Mar 9, 2023 13:23
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Does anyone in these here forums have any experience with the arcdroid CNC plasma cutter? Bro and I have been contemplating getting some kind of CNC plasma for the shop, but space is at a premium so having a portable small unit that can work on part of a large sheet but doesn't have a huge footprint at all times seems really attractive. It's not a cheap tool though, so investing in one would be dumb if it's useless junk. I would expect it to be inherently less accurate than a normal gantry style CNC that's well built but I don't know much about these things, and super high precision isn't necessarily a primary concern for the use cases we have in mind.
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Mar 31, 2023 08:40
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I want to replace my lovely ugly floppy wooden staircase railings at home with nice, slender yet sturdy custom fitting steel ones. I plan on using mostly plumbing parts, thick walled steel tube and mandrel bends and such and weld everything together. I'll need to tack everything up in place, then I can bring the things to the workshop for dirty jobs like full welding, grinding, surface finishing and the like. But I'll need to tack weld at home to be absolutely sure it will fit right. There's hardwood floor nearby that I'd rather not make burn marks in. The stairs themselves will be resurfaced as part of this project but I'd rather not set them on fire, and ideally not have to re-paint the stairwell walls when finished since that paint job is recent and looks good. I have the option of using MIG or TIG, but I'd rather MIG, welding-wise, but MIG makes spatter. I'm thinking about ways of protecting walls and floors from burns - does anyone have any good ideas for this? I have a fiberglass welding blanket and I can buy more if warranted, but I don't think a single layer of that material would prevent a molten blob of steel from making burn marks in the floor. Leather would be great but not cheap and useless to me when finished, I'd need several cows worth to feel somewhat safe. Damp cardboard? Damp cardboard with welding blanket on top? Some type of product I don't even know exists? Or am I dumb and should choose TIG for tacking instead and have less spatter and smoke to worry about and buy some good clamps so I can fix everything in place so both hands are free? The only proper machine work I have planned are turning some flanges for screw connections to walls, floors and ceilings (all reinforced concrete thankfully) but I figured there's bound to be some welding experience ITT.
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Apr 18, 2024 18:57
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Not more spatter than MIG in general I guess, but way more than TIG does at any event. I could probably get away with building a box-like spatter catching structure and keep it just under the welding area and it would probably catch almost everything. It turns out I can get Ram-board (which I've never heard of) where I live (not the US). I'll look into it. It's pretty pricy at €180 for a roll but that's 30 square meters which is plenty and if it indeed works for spatter it would be a good solution. Part of me is too lazy to use the MIG - it's big and heavy, nearly 100 kg so I need help to move it from the shop (it has wheels though) unlike the TIG which is a fairly portable inverter machine that runs on a standard 230v outlet. The MIG uses 3-phase from an outlet type I don't have at home. I do have residential 3-phase though, I could just make an adapter from the stove outlet or better yet wire a socket into an unused triple group of breakers I have just sitting there in the box being no good to me right now, so neither of these things are actually real obstacles, just more work. I'm way more experienced and confident with the MIG than the TIG, especially when overhead or vertical and not sitting comfortably on a stool at the welding table with everything including my hands propped up.
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Apr 18, 2024 20:14
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meowmeowmeowmeow posted:If you're just tacking things before.mocimg to weld em up elsewhere seems like tig would be perfect? Yeah I'm looking at additional welding blankets. There are silicone coated fiberglass ones that are well reviewed, seems like a couple of those in addition to what I already have and what leather I can scrounge up should probably see me through. I plan on doing as much prep work as possible in the shop (like if the mandrel bends I end up ordering aren't already beveled at the edges I'll do that on the belt sander), and use the chop saw and do the vast majority if not all of angle grinding outside when fitting everything up. Some assemblies can probably be completely shop fabricated just from measurements, it's mainly the handrails that I know for sure I absolutely want to tack on site. The handrails are really what will make or break this project aesthetically so I want to get those right, and they'll be the trickiest part. There's some other bits too, but they seem pretty straightforward. Like some kind of toddler blocking fence, for example. I don't have toddlers anymore but I'd hate for someone else's to fall to death in my home. I'll experiment with turning up some kind of internal sleeves for helping with handrail parts alignment. You probably can't insert one very far into a bend (which is the only place I'll make joints) but I don't need much and it's worth a shot. Buying a tube clamp or two is probably a good idea. Some good and sharp quality hammer drill bits that can cut through rebar easily if I find those where I absolutely need a hole. I'm also buying a pipe sander for this project. I might never use one again but it seems like I'll absolutely need one, and there's none for rental locally that I can find, at least not for amateurs. Hadlock posted:I've had pretty good luck covering stuff with cardboard boxes and/or cheap padded moving blankets (that our mover left behind) I weld within a couple feet of a nice leather couch I have in storage and haven't had any issues welding near it, and I'm using flux core which spatters a good amount Invalido fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Apr 18, 2024 |
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Apr 18, 2024 20:52
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