Welding Tips and Tricks

I made a bunch of trophies out of old car parts for the car show we threw a couple weeks ago.

And here is a 4150 holley intake 102mm Throttle elbow.



and some 3" intercooler Vband flanges

Fantastic work. Much better than chinsy cheap trophies

Just thought to post a little project I’ve been working on. This is to be a fairly robust rolling table to support a really heavy, cast iron, hot foil stamping press that a friend of mine uses for her leather work. The legs on this are 5cm square tubing with 2mm wall thickness.

As you can see in the first photo, my welding table is not really so heavy duty, being a little homemade affair with a 5mm-thick top that I threw together for myself. My usual work is metal sculpture and some simple hobby stuff, so I never bothered with clamping holes or such. This project is somewhat on the large side of things for me and so I’ve had to be a bit ‘creative’ to make things work out…. thus that armload of woodworkers clamps and a couple of nylon straps to pull the whole thing together. Pretty ‘Mickey Mouse’, but it works.

That torch you see hanging there is a 17-style with button control, which was just fine for the ‘walk-around’ I did - pecking a tack here... and then a tack there - prior to removing the project from the bench and welding it all out.
In the second photo the table is mostly welded out and I’m attaching the plates that will serve to mount the wheels. Since the project is larger than my little welding table, I clamped on some outriggers to serve as supports.

Of course, with such a small welding table I have no real way to lock down my work sufficiently to avoid weld-induced stress. I can only try to minimize distortion and then deal with the effects. In this case I used a precision level to first level out my support surface and then, once the plates were slid into place under the legs of that table project I used the level on the top surface of the project and made certain that it too was blocked up level. Sure enough the table had pulled a bit during the final welding and there was a wee bit of ‘air’ between the leg and wheel plate on one side. I compensated for this by first welding the other three plates and then, with everything clamped down, was able to weld-fill that slight gap between the other leg and plate so as to bring it round right. The wheels are fixed in place with bolts so even if I’m still a little out I can slip in some shim material between plate and wheel to compensate and make it roll true on a level surface.

Last of all I include a close-up of one of the wheel mounting plates in progress. I don’t think my welding will win any prizes, but it’s certainly good enough for purpose and I’m pretty sure that seam won’t let go anytime soon. Those clamps are there to secure the plate to the outrigger and to try to minimize the tendency of the plate to distort during the weld-up.

One last thing: I did sort of shoot myself in the leg when I designed this table. I used my #17 torch for most of the welding and the outer seams on the wheel plates, but the amount of space between the lowest cross bars and the wheel plates is just so small ( 4cm = 1.6inch) that there was no way I could even get the torch head in there. That CK-9 Super Flex you see in the second photo did allow me to wrap the welds around towards the inside a ways, but even there it was just a wee bit too tight to allow me to run the weld seam all the way through. ( big sigh of frustration! ) Stubby gas lens kit, anyone?

Lunch anyone?


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Leaning post for a poling platform on a flats boat.

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New gas service at one of the local schools. Gas provider set the new meter and I ran new pipe into the building. Only had a 4 hour window for actual shut down.

4hrs that's crazy man. You wouldn't have had time to scratch !


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Fortunately I was able to do most of the work ahead of time. the only thing left on shutdown day what's to bolt up the last 4 inch flange and do the two welds on the tee.

Made a nice adjustable engine support while I swap the junk auto out of my TDI Jetta. A few pics of some oher stuff I'm building...

Otto Nobedder wrote:

5th Street Fab wrote:... I finally got a bottle of helium at home...

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Sweet!
I have the incredibly rare blessing of completely unlimited access to helium. One of our clients provides whatever we ask for because I use it in leak detection.

Steve

Lucky man! I got to finally use some at work today. I'm hooked. Now if only they would get it for everyday use!

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Today i made two simple cordless drill holders and weld four adjustable legs for an assembly table made for line assembly of kitchen ovens. All make with 304 stainless steel scarp from ovens productions, the square tube for the legs are just 1mm thickness tig welded

Last 2 weeks or so. Happy Father's day





























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This was terrifying but so exciting! I posted earlier the beginnings of this, now it's all done, just need to add some sensors and pressure references, maybe a brace to the block. Last week I finally got off my ass and bought the plenum metal, and went to my friend's shop with a big press with my angle and rod to bend it. It worked well with the experiment with the coolant tank so I was cautiously optimistic. But even with 3003, it is just too much length with a single pressure point. The 1.5" solid aluminum bar bent before making much of an impression on the sheet (3/16" thick). I called several audibles, one was a steel jack handle, that crushed. Finally we found a 1.5" solid STEEL bar, I cut it to length and that finally worked. It almost seemed like it wasn't going to, it was bending a lot but wasn't yielding and when it bottomed out in the angle, it straightened out the bend. PSI is a bitch, I'm from an RC airplane model background and I should have an appreciation for load distribution but it's still hard to picture intuitively.

Alls' well that ends well, I'm SUPER stoked with the end result, I was cautiously optimistic that my skill level was now where it needs to be but I always tend to attempt things when they're at least a notch outside of my comfort zone and sometimes ability but that's what makes it fun...

That looks fancy and like you did a heck a job welding that all out.

D that looks nice and clean!

Thanks a lot guys!

I put a lot of effort into today's welding.

My filler tooling cabinet is complete finally and out on the floor.

Beautiful work as usual


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How many times have you had to patch the flighting on those augers? Nice work.

some practice with an aluminum box

crimas wrote:some practice with an aluminum box

Nice looking welds

Finished a new welding positioner project that I have been working with a local machine shop on. Ran some tests, works well. Played around last night running some autogenous welds with the torch strapped to my steady-rest. These were done at 2pps. Different amp settings for the different spots. I guess its a pen holder for my desk at work. haha.

jernigan78 wrote:Finished a new welding positioner project that I have been working with a local machine shop on. Ran some tests, works well. Played around last night running some autogenous welds with the torch strapped to my steady-rest. These were done at 2pps. Different amp settings for the different spots. I guess its a pen holder for my desk at work. haha.

Looks great, would like to know more about your rotator build