Welding Tips and Tricks

I'm new to the forum. As we all know, there isn't a whole lot of people about that care as much about welding as we do, which is why I am here. It's just too much holding all of this in all the time. Anyway, here is a project some may like. It was one of those design as you go things based around a so-called budget. He just wanted a brush guard with a couple bolt on lights initially. It's all sched 40 anodized aluminum pipe and anodized 1/4 x 2" and 1/4 x 4" and some tuff brite we had laying around. All welded with my old 250 syncrowave, manual pulse (miller on/off torch switch) at 250 amps AC. High freq at 70, AC balance set on balanced welding, or in that area anyway. 1/8 pure tungsten, #7 cup/no lens. WP20 torch with the short cap along with some masking tape holding it all together.



It fits.




Ok, so it evolved a little.

A few more.



Some of the seat adaptations. All of this hinged around a 94qt Igloo cooler being able to stow under the seat.


All of the original bolt holes and threaded holes were utilized with the original hardware.

Hey,

Those may be the most beautiful things ive ever seen. After my wife of course.

Mick

That is awesome. Unbelievable craftsmanship.

Thanks,

Jason

Amazing how a small project like that can grow, and become a monster that can't be fed!

Very nice work, especially for manual pulse. I assume a simple paddle switch for on/off? A rotary or slide control is difficult to use for simple on/off pulse.

I got spoiled for automatic pulsing on a cold-box job. All 6061-T6 new pipe. Even the instrument tubing was 100% welded 6061.

A buddy at work watched me fix a hole he blew in a 40-series sch 10 pipe. Pulsing with a foot-pedal. Not the easy way, but he was amazed to see what I was doing with the pedal.

Steve S

It's a Miller on/off switch. This one happens to be at least 15 yrs old and has been used every working day since I got it. It's encased in rubber. This particular one is a hair trigger. Some you get are rather stiff. I used to use the little roller micro switches from places like radio shack and they would last about a year but were cheap. Those I would mount on the side of the torch handle. These are mounted on the back for my style of welding. They are manual pulse filled but then in the same motion, back stepped, lifted and flame dressed to smooth out the wrinkles a bit. The arc stream is adjusted just to cut the very edge of the weld which is how I get the fine edge. I weld both left and right handed like this. Another weldor could probably tell which weld was done with which hand, but visibly, there is no difference quality wise.

For this style of welding, I don't hold the torch overhand, but more like one would a can of spray paint, for lack of a better explanation. Index finger pushes the button.

A credit to your ability is the fact I can't tell your right-hand work from left-hand work in the images you've given.

I can tell, generally, which is which by position (still a guess, as you can roll that any which way on the bench), but no image is close enough to see any difference.

It's difficult to tell hand on my aluminum welds, but not impossible. On stainless, it's easier.

Steve S

Okay, I think I see a little "southpaw" on the upper mounting brackets, background of the first image.

Difficult positioning for the left hand, about 6 to 10 o'clock, then wrapped back CCW, from about 1 to 10 o'clock.

Hidden welds, as installed.

Steve S

I'm amazed how little stick-out you have on that tungsten. I like a good 3/8"- 1/2" for aluminum.

I usually use a gas lens, though.

I also have unlimited access to helium at work, which spoils the hell out of me for heavier sections.

Otto Nobedder wrote:I'm amazed how little stick-out you have on that tungsten. I like a good 3/8"- 1/2" for aluminum.

I usually use a gas lens, though.

I also have unlimited access to helium at work, which spoils the hell out of me for heavier sections.

I must have dropped it because I typically don't let the tungsten ball back to less than an 1/8th. I am usually 1/4 to 3/8ths out. In that photo, you may notice that the tape is new. I think I must have just repaired the butt splices in the switch wires.

Good observation with the welds. That is exactly how I do it.

I work a little niche market, that requires me to be at the top of my game, but permits me almost no practice. I spend most of my time in diagnosis, and then have to make a critical repair after not welding for weeks.

I allow myself some practice time before performing the welds, but it's not the same as doing it every day.

Steve S

I looked at your tanker project and that is definitely not your every day task. I was reading through it and the whole time I was thinking that I would be nuts by now having to do that. I have welded everything from fuel tanks to fart handles but never anything like that.

I do get to reflange these fuel depot swivel (don't know the tech name) fittings from over at Port Tampa, and have worked on some of the lines out there. I was out there in August, 98 degrees, in a too small for me tyvek suit that was giving me camel toe. I really wouldn't want to be out there every day.

^^^^SPAMMER

Haha buddy! Guess the industrial cooler business isn't getting it done for ya! Dang. . . .your stuff must really suck! lol
Can you imagine having a job as a spammer, that rates right up there with pedophiles, of things that are shady about the internet? It's amazing the things that people will do to avoid working at a real job.

Hey,

It really is a waste of everyones time. If i knew of a company using spam emails/posts I would deliberately not do business with them.

Mick

Hey very ,very nice work on the custom tubing work that is very slick. I hope to get to that level some day its difficult when your average work week is between 60 -70 hrs a week at your everyday job. It makes it a little harder to throw the hood down and try and get your head into a project at the end of your day ya know. I noticed in your post you stated something about a manual switch for pulsing, is this something i can do to my diversion 180? I tried a machine at an expo that had pulse option and man is that a nice option that i wish i had. Any info. you could share on this wuld be great as I would like to have this option myself. Thanks in advance and again VERY nice workmanship.

TamJeff, for future reference, the male equvalent to "camel toe" is "Moose Knuckle".

I hear you. Tyvek sucks any time of year, but if the temperature is above 85 (even 75, if the humidity is high), they begin to suck the life out of you. That's one reason I've chosen to return to this job, rather than work on the road. Here, I have full discretion for how long I spend in any extreme condition, with no one riding my ass to hurry up. With liquid hydrogen, quality of work takes precedence over quantity.

Our primary client OWNS the company that built their fleet, yet they bring their hydrogen repair, rehab, and retest work to us. They won't officially say it, but from the hiring and expansion we've done, and the number of their tankers in our lot, I'm guessing we're now the sole provider of these services outside of "emergency" basis.

We'll soon be opening a similar facility in Ohio, to service their atmospheric fleet (liquid argon, nitrogen, oxygen).

Steve S

If you'd like to see the "business end" of one of these hydrogen trailers, check out this topic:

http://forum.weldingtipsandtricks.com/v ... f=9&t=2162

Steve S

Beautiful work TamJeff!

Other Steve

under the hood wrote:Hey very ,very nice work on the custom tubing work that is very slick. I hope to get to that level some day its difficult when your average work week is between 60 -70 hrs a week at your everyday job. It makes it a little harder to throw the hood down and try and get your head into a project at the end of your day ya know. I noticed in your post you stated something about a manual switch for pulsing, is this something i can do to my diversion 180? I tried a machine at an expo that had pulse option and man is that a nice option that i wish i had. Any info. you could share on this wuld be great as I would like to have this option myself. Thanks in advance and again VERY nice workmanship.

I have taught a bunch of welders to weld this stuff. I can usually have someone running text book welds in two weeks max. I make it look easy when they watch me so they assume it is. The one thing that most people cannot grasp initially is, the visual perspective, and that old saying. . ."watch the edges, the middle will take care of itself." Once I get them in the habit of keeping their focal perspective in mind, they can't believe that how simple it really is. I have been interviewing experienced welders, showing them what I want it to look like and go to flip my helmet up and they will have left!

One guy that worked for us for about 3 years, learned welding in the military and had an extensive list of specialty alloys he was proficient in. It took me 6 months to get it to where he didn't get himself in trouble almost daily. After it finally clicked that he was trying too hard, you would have sworn he invented the process by all the admiring he would do of his own work. I weld anodized probably 75% of the time. You can also weld like this with the pulse feature on the Dynasty set to about 1 pulse per second. I weld manually at about 1.5-2 pulses/second.

Here is a LOT of anodized. At any one point in something like this, it would really wreck your day to blow a weld or arc out on a pipe by accident.

Otto Nobedder wrote:

TamJeff, for future reference, the male equvalent to "camel toe" is "Moose Knuckle".

I hear you. Tyvek sucks any time of year. . .

I am impressed with that type of work that you do. Just for finding the problem itself.

Moose knuckle! LOL. . .I will have to remember that! Don't be bashful showing more work. I can always stand to learn more welding ideas and fixes.

delraydella wrote:Beautiful work TamJeff!

Other Steve

Thank you. I really try to be as good as the best. 9 out of 10 times, I give more than what they pay for just for having learned that it is just easier to do it right than it is trying to cut corners. Most welders can probably vouch for this. The bottom line ends up being at the labor end. So there I am, staying late just to avoid having something shameful. Nobody ever figures that it was a budget constraint where the shortfalls lie, it must have been a hack welder. I can't afford to get that kind of rep. Too much of that going on these days, I think. I will not be reduced to China standards, even if I go broke doing to the contrary.

The unofficial motto of industrial construction is,

"There's never time to do it right. There's always time to do it over."

I can't count the jobs where I've seen that philosophy in action.

Steve S

That same motto holds true for television and movie set constructiuon. I can't count the number of times I've been handed drawings, floor plans, even full color renderings of projects, get it built and set up, only to have the big shots come in and say "Oh, it's nice, but that's not what we wanted. You need to change it."

Hey tamjeff, thanks for the response im learning pretty quick this aluminum welding , but still have a long way to go. All of my projects so far have all been home done stuff and turned pretty good so far. I am going to do a little playing around with my foot pedal to see if I can train myself to pulse that way being that it is not an option on my deversion 180. being that im fairly new to this if i can train myself with it now i can only keep getting better at it as i go. I have played around with torch angle,different cup sizes, tungstens an so forth just to see the pros and cons from all of it and did learn alot. So maybe i will experiment a little with the pulsing of the foot pedal and see what happens. If you or anyone else has any pointers on this feel free to fire away thanks.