gavcarter
Member
- Messages
- 458
- Location
- Hartlepool
So sometimes common sense, leaves us for a second when we see a 15kg reel of wire on offer....we get it home got to use it and oooohhh noooo it doesn't fit in my little welder!
I'm not the first to do it and wont be the last, but I thought id document my "quick fix" on here just to show at least one way to get round, it might not be the best or prettiest, but it only took about 30mins to do...
so my first task to join two bits of angle into a T shape, nice and easy, except my wire had a kink in it and it decided to stop start stop start stop start on me.... I plodded on anyway laying a small bead so I could remove the mole grips from the workpeice
once the wire feed was sorted I finished welding the pieces together and drilled some mounting holes in it, I also found a long M10 bolt
one of the beads needed grinding slightly as it was proud of the flat surface
"eyeing" the T piece up against the new reel, a 10mm hole was drilled in it and the bolt welded into it.
You could grind the head down to mount it flush but I didn't as next time, ill buy a smaller reel and this will be useless
I threaded a big nut onto the bolts and started to grind it down to match the one in the welder
then the bolt is removed to de-burr the threads
I just used the chain holes on the back of the welding trolley to bolt this too, I also added a small section of copper brake pipe to stop the wire chaffing on the hole in the back of the welder, and offer it upto the rollers nice and square. The standard reel brake will fit the outer side of the reel just as it should in the welder, but I couldn't remove the inner one from the welder readily, I found an old die about the right size and slid it onto the bolt first to hold the other side of the reel central
I havnt managed to actually weld anything yet as the kids wouldn't behave long enough for me to leave them with the wife, but I did run off around 10 metres off wire through the torch and it was nice and smooth with no snatching or grabbing, hope this is of some use to some one, rewinding a reel isn't a nice thought
I'm not the first to do it and wont be the last, but I thought id document my "quick fix" on here just to show at least one way to get round, it might not be the best or prettiest, but it only took about 30mins to do...
so my first task to join two bits of angle into a T shape, nice and easy, except my wire had a kink in it and it decided to stop start stop start stop start on me.... I plodded on anyway laying a small bead so I could remove the mole grips from the workpeice
once the wire feed was sorted I finished welding the pieces together and drilled some mounting holes in it, I also found a long M10 bolt
one of the beads needed grinding slightly as it was proud of the flat surface
"eyeing" the T piece up against the new reel, a 10mm hole was drilled in it and the bolt welded into it.
You could grind the head down to mount it flush but I didn't as next time, ill buy a smaller reel and this will be useless
I threaded a big nut onto the bolts and started to grind it down to match the one in the welder
then the bolt is removed to de-burr the threads
I just used the chain holes on the back of the welding trolley to bolt this too, I also added a small section of copper brake pipe to stop the wire chaffing on the hole in the back of the welder, and offer it upto the rollers nice and square. The standard reel brake will fit the outer side of the reel just as it should in the welder, but I couldn't remove the inner one from the welder readily, I found an old die about the right size and slid it onto the bolt first to hold the other side of the reel central
I havnt managed to actually weld anything yet as the kids wouldn't behave long enough for me to leave them with the wife, but I did run off around 10 metres off wire through the torch and it was nice and smooth with no snatching or grabbing, hope this is of some use to some one, rewinding a reel isn't a nice thought