To do any kind of manual welding you need to be able to clearly see the molten "puddle" of heated liquid metal that you create as the welding proceeds. I'm still looking for a TIG video that has a good clear view of the puddle. In the mean time check out the handsome welds in this video from the website WeldingTipsandTricks.com, It contains 45 seconds of aluminum TIG welding in action. Welding Supplies, Welding helmet, TIG Inverter
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Report #1 From Welding Class
I originally wanted to post after every class, but it has been a little hard to keep up. Along with writing for this blog and going to welding school, I've been try to manage my photos better, be my own webmaster and hold down a job. In any case, I've had five welding class sessions so far!! We are welding aluminum with the TIG (Tungsten Inert Gas) process , also know as GTAW (Gas Tungsten Arc Welding). I have played around with welding for nearly 30 years and I must say that welding school is a humbling experience! And just when I thought I was catching on the instructor switched us from welding on a flat surface to welding on vertical.
Below is an example of my work in the flat position (welded while the material was lying flat on my welding table). Not great, but not too bad for a guy with only a couple of hours experience with the GTAW process. I should also mention that both of these examples are on pretty thin aluminum stock (0.062"/1.575mm).
But then I started working in the vertical up position (material held in a vertical orientation while welding from bottom to top). Ooops! Looks like a chicken pooped on my metal.
I think there are about ten more weeks, so twenty (20) more class sessions, left in this Fall 2009 semester. Im sure that I will need to take classes at least through the Spring 2010 semester to have made good progress on both the TIG/GTAW and stick/SMAW welding processes. There might be a summer semester available too, but beyond that I will have to move on to other areas of the metal working arts and sciences ;-)
Below is an example of my work in the flat position (welded while the material was lying flat on my welding table). Not great, but not too bad for a guy with only a couple of hours experience with the GTAW process. I should also mention that both of these examples are on pretty thin aluminum stock (0.062"/1.575mm).
But then I started working in the vertical up position (material held in a vertical orientation while welding from bottom to top). Ooops! Looks like a chicken pooped on my metal.
I think there are about ten more weeks, so twenty (20) more class sessions, left in this Fall 2009 semester. Im sure that I will need to take classes at least through the Spring 2010 semester to have made good progress on both the TIG/GTAW and stick/SMAW welding processes. There might be a summer semester available too, but beyond that I will have to move on to other areas of the metal working arts and sciences ;-)
Friday, September 25, 2009
Tool Review: JMR Tubing Notcher
At $595.00 this is not a purchase most home shop enthusiasts would make lightly. I'm talking about JMR's heavy duty tubing notcher.
Pirate4x4.com has a great in depth review with lots of detailed pictures.
Watch out, if you like heavy-duty wrenching and fabricating on hard core 4x4 rock buggies and stuff like that, you might find yourself addicted to the Pirate4x4 website. They have a busy forum that is a great source of technical do-it-yourself stuff on drivetrains, suspensions, chassis and metal working techniques. Enjoy!
JMR Manufacturing
P.O. Box 606
Creston, CA 93432
805-239-5972
Thursday, September 24, 2009
My Prior "Shop" Experience
First I should say that I do have some welding and fabricating skills. My first attempt to weld involved a car battery, some jumper cables and coat hanger wire "electrodes". I was 19 and trying to fix something on one of my cars. I don't remember much at this late date, but I don't think it turned out too well. I didn't know what a real electrode should look like, or anything about electrode diameter or flux, but hey, a guy's got to start out somewhere.
When I was 22 I got a job as a laborer on a steel building "erection" crew. I was an enthusiastic worker who liked climbing around on girders and bar joists and so it wasn't long before someone said to me "hey kid you think you could weld this corrugated sheet metal flooring down to these joists?". They didn't have to ask twice. Just the thought of being allowed to wear a welding helmet and to handle the stinger of a Lincoln engine driven welder was exciting as hell to me. The welding I did really didn't require much skill. It was a lot like making spot welds to hold sheet metal decking to the building's floor framing. After a couple of weeks of that I was allowed to graduate to running beads to weld floor joists to girders. This wasn't structurally critical. It was really just another kind of tacking operation, but it let me get practice watching the puddle (of molten metal) at the end of my arcing "stick" electrode. If you do this stuff day after day you begin to learn something. I also got to do quite a bit of oxy-fuel torch cutting and I learned how to rig loads to be lifted by a crane. I only worked for that company for about four months. They were from out of town and only there for the length of the project. They moved on and I stayed put.
Soon after, I got a job with a small, boiler and pipe fitting company. I got a few chances to try my hand at MIG welding. I also got to practice a little bit of oxy-fuel welding. The company used oxy-fuel welding to weld small diameter schedule 40 natural gas pipe for residential gas service. I mainly watched that operation.
Another three years passed until I was working in a shop where I needed to make a custom hydraulic shear. I looked in the Trader Classified Paper and found a Lincoln "beehive" welding machine. It was and industrial motor-generator welder that featured a three-phase electric motor that turned generator that made the current for welding. I liked that machine. Again I was burning rod! I built a guillotine shear with a heavy duty "H" frame made from salvaged steel I-beams. I also modified a two axle trailer and made a frame hitch for thr truck that was to tow it. I had all the time I wanted to make mistakes and try again. It was a good learning experience. I later sold the welder to some aerospace mechanic in Silicon Valley that said he was working on a private space launch project!
Not much welding for a long time after that (10 years). In about 1999 or 2000 I was driving semi-trucks all over North America and I had developed the habit of buying cool tools on eBay and picking them up myself in the big truck. This was how I got my 255 Lincoln MIG welder. I saw the deal on some classified add on the web. I saw that my schedule would be taking me near the seller's location within two weeks so I asked if he'd hold it for me until I could get there. About 14 days later I was picking up my lightly used welder. It's great to have a semi-truck to pick up stuff and fuel paid for by the business! Since then I've worked on stuff like trailer hitches, trailers, scaffold frames and some residential stuff like metal fencing and support columns for floor framing. Best of all, I've done repairs and modifications to my classic 4x4 Toyota 4runners and pickup trucks.
Some good experience all in all, but I still have no clue about welding on vertical and overhead surfaces and my experience is all with mild steel, no aluminum and no stainless steel. Since one of my goals is to do some more serious automotive work I need to improve and I need experience on different metals.
Hence I have enrolled in welding school at the local community college.
Depending on how good the instruction is, and how good a student I am, I plan to put in at least two semesters (Fall 2009 & Spring 2010). If I feel I need it I can continue in the Summer 2010 semester. I'm hoping by Fall 2010 I'll be free to start machining classes (lathe and vertical mill). Although, I am also looking into the idea that I might buy a lathe to try teaching myself with the video courses from The American Gunsmithing Institute and others like Rudy Kouhoupt.
So long for now. I'll report soon on my welding class experience. -- Mit
When I was 22 I got a job as a laborer on a steel building "erection" crew. I was an enthusiastic worker who liked climbing around on girders and bar joists and so it wasn't long before someone said to me "hey kid you think you could weld this corrugated sheet metal flooring down to these joists?". They didn't have to ask twice. Just the thought of being allowed to wear a welding helmet and to handle the stinger of a Lincoln engine driven welder was exciting as hell to me. The welding I did really didn't require much skill. It was a lot like making spot welds to hold sheet metal decking to the building's floor framing. After a couple of weeks of that I was allowed to graduate to running beads to weld floor joists to girders. This wasn't structurally critical. It was really just another kind of tacking operation, but it let me get practice watching the puddle (of molten metal) at the end of my arcing "stick" electrode. If you do this stuff day after day you begin to learn something. I also got to do quite a bit of oxy-fuel torch cutting and I learned how to rig loads to be lifted by a crane. I only worked for that company for about four months. They were from out of town and only there for the length of the project. They moved on and I stayed put.
Soon after, I got a job with a small, boiler and pipe fitting company. I got a few chances to try my hand at MIG welding. I also got to practice a little bit of oxy-fuel welding. The company used oxy-fuel welding to weld small diameter schedule 40 natural gas pipe for residential gas service. I mainly watched that operation.
Another three years passed until I was working in a shop where I needed to make a custom hydraulic shear. I looked in the Trader Classified Paper and found a Lincoln "beehive" welding machine. It was and industrial motor-generator welder that featured a three-phase electric motor that turned generator that made the current for welding. I liked that machine. Again I was burning rod! I built a guillotine shear with a heavy duty "H" frame made from salvaged steel I-beams. I also modified a two axle trailer and made a frame hitch for thr truck that was to tow it. I had all the time I wanted to make mistakes and try again. It was a good learning experience. I later sold the welder to some aerospace mechanic in Silicon Valley that said he was working on a private space launch project!
Not much welding for a long time after that (10 years). In about 1999 or 2000 I was driving semi-trucks all over North America and I had developed the habit of buying cool tools on eBay and picking them up myself in the big truck. This was how I got my 255 Lincoln MIG welder. I saw the deal on some classified add on the web. I saw that my schedule would be taking me near the seller's location within two weeks so I asked if he'd hold it for me until I could get there. About 14 days later I was picking up my lightly used welder. It's great to have a semi-truck to pick up stuff and fuel paid for by the business! Since then I've worked on stuff like trailer hitches, trailers, scaffold frames and some residential stuff like metal fencing and support columns for floor framing. Best of all, I've done repairs and modifications to my classic 4x4 Toyota 4runners and pickup trucks.
Some good experience all in all, but I still have no clue about welding on vertical and overhead surfaces and my experience is all with mild steel, no aluminum and no stainless steel. Since one of my goals is to do some more serious automotive work I need to improve and I need experience on different metals.
Hence I have enrolled in welding school at the local community college.
Depending on how good the instruction is, and how good a student I am, I plan to put in at least two semesters (Fall 2009 & Spring 2010). If I feel I need it I can continue in the Summer 2010 semester. I'm hoping by Fall 2010 I'll be free to start machining classes (lathe and vertical mill). Although, I am also looking into the idea that I might buy a lathe to try teaching myself with the video courses from The American Gunsmithing Institute and others like Rudy Kouhoupt.
So long for now. I'll report soon on my welding class experience. -- Mit
Thursday, September 17, 2009
What This Blog Is Really All About
Ok, so I never really had a corporate job (except for a short, but very interesting, stint as a trading floor runner at the Chicago Board of Trade). What I'm trying to say here is that, at middle age, I've decided to become a kind of independent shop engineer. The desired skill set includes metal working (welding, machining and metal shaping), mechanics (automotive, motorcycle, small engine, hydraulics, and small to medium sized equipment), composites (fiberglass, carbon fiber, kevlar and plastic resins) and assorted techniques related to wood working, auto body repair and painting, etc.. I've dabbled in this stuff since the tender age of 10 when I tried to modify my bicycle by adding a lawnmower engine. Since then I've been a I've wrenched on my personal vehicles, including my 25 year old Toyota 4x4, which has undergone an engine transplant, transmission upgrade, fuel injection conversion and a repaint without ever actually seeing the inside of a real repair shop in the 20 years that I've owned it. I've also built trailers, shop machines and a fiberglass camper for a pickup.
Now that I'm in my 40's I've finally decided to get serious about what has been an enjoyable hobby. Here's my plan.
Now that I'm in my 40's I've finally decided to get serious about what has been an enjoyable hobby. Here's my plan.
- The other day I abruptly decided that my welding skills had come as far as they were going to without some professional help. So, I enrolled in the welding program at the local community college. I'm presently studying TIG and "stick" welding.
- My math skills are not very well developed. If I am serious about being an engineer I'm going to have to study algebra, geometry, trigonometry and calculus. I think this is an area where the internet has everything I need to teach myself without formal courses.
- The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) OpenCourseWare program has free access to mechanical engineering courses. Utah State University also has OpenCourseWare resources for engineering and math. Using these and other resources (online and not) I think I can put together a decent curriculum to achieve my goal.
- There are good home study video courses on machining with the metal lathe and milling machine. The American Gunsmithing Institute has a series that covers the lathe, the milling machine and general machine shop support equipment. Some of those DVDs can also be rented from SmartFlix.com (lathe, milling) If I can find a deal on a lathe I would like to go the self-teaching route. If not, a slightly more distant technical college in my area has machining courses.
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