Welding Tips and Tricks

I'm doing a few little projects where I need to cut some stainless. Most is 10 ga. and the pieces are in the 1-2" range. Does anybody have any good advice for cutting repetitive pieces? I have a plasma but not a CNC. I built this cutting the pieces with a plasma using a template as a guide but still cut freehand. Any off the wall tricks welcomed.

John, I'd say you did a real good job if that was done by hand, don't know what else could be done outside of having them cut via, laser or waterjet

I'm welding up different shapes with some of the stainless scrap pieces I have around. It gives practice and it's fun. I want to do a truncated triacontadigon at 6" in diameter. That makes for 180 exact 1" sides. In English it's a 32 sided soccer ball with pentagons and hexagons.
The dodecagon, 12 hexagons, was tough getting all the angles and pieces exact. It was more than tough , it was damn near impossible. I could send it out to be stamped of laser cut but that takes away from the home project thing.

I know some wont like this but check it out.
https://youtu.be/WNt-bL_-fJY

If you have a high purity marker, I cut a lot of stainless with a cutting disc on an angle grinder or metabo. You can see the mark on stainless good, and as long as you score it first, the cuts come out pretty decent. A lot of pipe is cut that way in the field. Of course a good portable band saw works as well on stainless as long as the blade speed is slow and steady.

You can also take some angle iron and clamp it to the cut and use that as a guide for the plasma torch.

Your cuts look pretty good though as far as I can tell.

Tom Osselton wrote:I know some wont like this but check it out.
https://youtu.be/WNt-bL_-fJY

Mr. Tig is the Mr. Rodgers of the welding world. The guy in this video makes a monkey out of MT. Jody always shows his welds when he is done...I wonder why MT doesn't...hmmm

exnailpounder wrote:

Tom Osselton wrote:I know some wont like this but check it out.
https://youtu.be/WNt-bL_-fJY

Mr. Tig is the Mr. Rodgers of the welding world. The guy in this video makes a monkey out of MT. Jody always shows his welds when he is done...I wonder why MT doesn't...hmmm

Hey Fred Rogers is awesome. Mr. Tig, not so much.

But what about his little dance move (stir the pot) at the start of his episodes?

electrode wrote:But what about his little dance move (stir the pot) at the start of his episodes?

LOL...Old Wyatt looks like he's the life of the party everywhere he goes doesn't he? I think he caters to the element that has no problem saying "that's good enough". It's not really hard to be a good welder and make pretty welds when your sitting at a bench in the best of conditions and MT still turns out crappy welds. Even Jody says we can't make 'em all pretty but why would someone announce themselves as a "world renowned" tig expert and turn out crap welds most of the time?? I guess I like Jody so much because he's very humble for someone that has given so much back to the welding industry.

Hey I thought he was doing the " Truffle Shuffle "
I believe previously there was an agreement not to dig at the guy - he means well - some respected guys here rate him despite some questionable videos.

Lots of new members. We need to remind everyone of the "if you don't like it, don't watch it rule"

Very Neat project! Well Done! You definitely need to keep us posted on your progress

I've been doing a few test pieces of SB to Stainless. I AM going to make a truncated icosahedron. My goal is to do the Hexagons in either SB or stainless and flip for the Pentagons. I have some 1/8 SB coming next week. I cut some 3/16 SB with a wood miter saw and carbide blade. It worked fairly well. At least all the pieces were identical. Here is the rough product of that. I still need to do some grinding and polishing. Maybe a weld touch up here and there. It weighs in now at 3 lb. 11 oz.

Very interesting, looking forward to more

Worked with ss most of my life and we always used a right angle 5 inch cutoff hand held or bigger Milwaukee and a piece of steel for a guide. Make a light score a couple times along your mark and the blade follows along just fine.

Boy I'd sure like to give a positive and detailed update on my little project but there isn't one. I'm still trying to get the stainless hex pieces cut Identically. I can cut them close but close ain't good enough when doing a project with this many common edges. Needing 20 dead nuts identical pieces makes for 120 chances for something to not line up.

WELL YAHOO!! After a long awaited step, I finally got my stainless cut on a CNC Plasma today! Next will be to machine cut the SB to match the CNC'ed stainless. I've been fooling with some templates and holding fixtures to use as a component setup. I'm still working on ideas for that. I do have quite a few ideas already that didn't work.

John Chamorro wrote:WELL YAHOO!! After a long awaited step, I finally got my stainless cut on a CNC Plasma today! Next will be to machine cut the SB to match the CNC'ed stainless. I've been fooling with some templates and holding fixtures to use as a component setup. I'm still working on ideas for that. I do have quite a few ideas already that didn't work.

Thomas Edison's light bulb was the result of about 4000 things that didn't work...

Otto Nobedder wrote:

John Chamorro wrote:I do have quite a few ideas already that didn't work.

Thomas Edison's light bulb was the result of about 4000 things that didn't work...

Mistakes were a lot cheaper then. If nothing else, I am persistent. I WILL make it. I now have all of my pieces cut. I have a couple setup ideas I'll try this weekend. It's supposed to rain today and snow on Sunday so I won't be outside playing.