Was helping my uncle weld up an animal feed barrier yesterday evening.
The bottom had rotten off where the manure/ silage etc had been and he had welded in a new section of box with his stick welder but he wasn't confident enough to weld the new sheet steel to the new box section.
We set the 4/5m section of barrier up on 2 old drums so that I could weld at waste height (in hindsight a third drum in the middle may have helped), and I proceeded to tack the sheet steel on and eventually welded in the entire seam. I had planned only to stitch it every few inches but he wanted it fully seam welded.
On completion we looked at our not-so-handywork and realised the bloody middle had sagged/ distorted so now we are left with a curved barrier!
Is there any way we can rectify this?
I was thinking of flipping it over and then welding the opposite side to get enough heat into it that it would sag to level?
We don't have any heating equipment so welding is really the only heat source we have.
I didn't think such a robust bit of box would succumb to distortion. Has this happened due to heat distortion or has the unsupported middle caused this or a bit of both?
This is my first time getting onto some big welding so its a learning curve (excuse the pun!)
Thanks,
Anton
The bottom had rotten off where the manure/ silage etc had been and he had welded in a new section of box with his stick welder but he wasn't confident enough to weld the new sheet steel to the new box section.
We set the 4/5m section of barrier up on 2 old drums so that I could weld at waste height (in hindsight a third drum in the middle may have helped), and I proceeded to tack the sheet steel on and eventually welded in the entire seam. I had planned only to stitch it every few inches but he wanted it fully seam welded.
On completion we looked at our not-so-handywork and realised the bloody middle had sagged/ distorted so now we are left with a curved barrier!
Is there any way we can rectify this?
I was thinking of flipping it over and then welding the opposite side to get enough heat into it that it would sag to level?
We don't have any heating equipment so welding is really the only heat source we have.
I didn't think such a robust bit of box would succumb to distortion. Has this happened due to heat distortion or has the unsupported middle caused this or a bit of both?
This is my first time getting onto some big welding so its a learning curve (excuse the pun!)
Thanks,
Anton
