Nice dog!

Side-note.. Make sure the dog is not in the room when/where you are welding. They tend to look/stare at the arc and they get the same eye problems as we do without a helmet..

Or get him a set of auto-darken goggles

Bye, Arno.

The flux on underwater rods produces a shielding gas that also pushes any water away when the arc is going and the extreme temperature of the arc itself vapourises the water rapidly.. Pretty similar to a normal rod that provides a shielding gas from the oxygen in the air. Striking the arc is the mos...

So is zinc vapor THAT bad, like cyanide bad? No. Zinc oxide exposure is fairly harmless in the short run. It can make you feel quite sick with coughing, fever and such, but unlike lead and other heavy metals like cadmium it doesn't accumulate and poision you long-term. Eg. see: https://en.wikipedia...

I sure relate on the glasses. I have tried different glasses and different cheaters. I need to accept the fact that I'll never see as well as I would like. One component of getting older is also that your eyes need much more light to work well compared to when you're younger. Strong lighting focuse...

Messer Griesheim is a very old german welding and cutting tech company that can trace it's origins back to 1898 They are still around and are a pretty big company that have different sub-companies (including trading in welding gasses) that make pretty much anything. Most of the stuff they make these...

I heard of a product called "solar flux" that you can apply to the back of the weld so that penetration doesn't result in sugaring, but not sure how it works. It's a powder that you mix into a paste using methanol, let it set up and apply to the back of the joint. You then weld it as norm...

See:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=060NbYoOAio

Kinda works, but not great. Can be (ab)used on thin steel sheet with MIG to reduce the risk of blowing through.

Bye, Arno.

Good result! Castings can be deceptively heavy as they tend to have much thicker walls and features compared to clean machined/billet parts as they need to be dimensionally stable while being cast. Too thin features tend to distort or not fill out evenly during the casting so that's usually avoided....

Such old parts can also be Zamak, which was quite popular before aluminium casting became affordable. Lots of die-cast stuff from the 40s-50s is Zamak. Some info: https://www.diecasting-mould.com/news/what-is-zamak-zamak-properties-types-of-zamak-alloys-diecasting-mould As it's mostly zinc you can't...

1) Can I just pull power from the first solenoid, basically teeing off it? 2) If not, what are my options? I would not drive the second solenoid directly from the first as you don't know how much 'headroom' the driving electronics have current-wise. A workaround, if it's indeed 24V, would be to tee...

Like mentioned above, the material is not terribly relevant for cracking. Many times issues like these are caused by improper/insufficient design for mounting the tank to something. Tank material is sometimes dictated more by the liquid that will be put into it. Eg. Alu tanks don't like prolonged ex...

Also... Before building any hoists or cranes, check your local rules and regulations surrounding these.

In many areas of the world this kind of equipment is fairly heavily regulated or subject to approval/inspection before it can be put to use.

Bye, Arno.

Looking at the pubished data: https://automotive.arcelormittal.com/products/flat/PHS/usibor_ductibor There doesn't seem to be a big issue welding it as they state: " MAG, MIG and conventional metal welding techniques, including brazing, can readily be applied." And of course like most car ...

Very nice! 'Overbuilt' in these kinds of conditions is usually good. Just means it'll last a lot longer :D Only possible addition I could imagine, but that will depend on your real-use experience, is perhaps some sort of removeable protection cage/shield around the hoses and bottom of the pumps so t...

I'm determined to be successful at this. There are times, though, that make me wonder if my older eyes are just not going to see as well as they really need to see to get even closer to the puddle. If you are over 40 or already wearing prescription glasses then I'd recommend getting some cheater le...

And of course there's no getting away from the fact that thin sheet metal just is a lot harder to work with. Welding in short 'bursts' and letting it cool helps a lot. You may need some form of heat soak material, like Jody showed in several of his videos, such as a copper/alu/brass backer to draw s...

Great! These are not special machines, but are decent for what they are and useful as low end AC and DC units. One thing you can do as a mod or upgrade is to add a second potentiometer in series with the pedal. That way you can adjust the upper limit of the weld current when the pedal is 'full throt...

Smells don't only come from particles, so a plain filter will still let you smell some byproducts from the welding process as they are pure gaseous form or so small that they pass a filter. As an example: even with a good (low micron) particlefilter you'd still smell rotting eggs as the gas they giv...

If the weld puddle on the parent material seems very 'watery' in consistency then it may have been cast with a high silicon content alloy. Can be common on some engines/parts when it's a combined steel/alu engine as it reduces the thermal expansion of the alu and there's less stresses where it meets...

Nice! I'd have to dig out my old physics books to find out what the effective resistance would be of an ionised path through argon. Could well be low enough that the actual effect on any 'normal' welding distance variation is in effect pretty much 0. Quite interesting though as many docs and videos ...

Very nice to see the V/A graphs :!: Eg. you can clearly see the spike in voltage right after the crossover point where the arc need to re-establish (higher resistance) even though HF is helping to keep the ionisation. Once the arc path is there the voltage drops to the base welding level as the path...

Yeah.. I was kinda expecting the HF to be a headache there as far as voltage measurement goes as that basically indeed induces massive voltage spikes.

Thanks for trying anyway!

Bye, Arno.

Yeah.. Because the power source is being actively controlled and generating the actual 'signal' in an inverter welder and we're not looking at a traditional 'dumb' A/C source (like a bare bones transformer just 'translating' the incoming A/C sine to a different/lower voltage but doing nothing else),...

One thing that's always interesting to see would be an overlay of the amps with the weld circuit voltage on the same graph with these kinds of A/C or mixed curves to see if perhaps the volts are shaped like the described functions or not at all. As inverter machines (try to) control the various comp...

3-phase 62A at 230V input (assuming the 230V is between the legs of the phases and not to neutral) would be 24.7 kW.. Of course the others end up at the same value ;) That would need a 33HP industrial (rotary)phase converter to run on a single phase input. American Rotary lists a suitable unit for $...