sako243
Member
- Messages
- 3,171
- Location
- My mansion in Wales
Some of you may remember some questions I had previously about a largish pipe that needed cutting to turn into BBQs.
Well, today I was finally able to start on it. First challenge: get the thing onto the rollers I'd made. Some slightly sketchy use of a trolley jack and bottle jack got it off the pallet it was strapped to and onto the rollers.
That is 273cm long, 20" OD and 20mm wall L80 spec casing. Rough calculations put it around the 800kg mark.
So once it was on the rollers and as I had the plasma in the 110 I thought I'd see what happened. Luckily the lab this is outside has a 400A per phase 3 phase supply coming in so electricity is not an issue. Unfortunately though I'd forgotten consumables at home so was left with what was on the torch. Second unfortunate scenario was I don't have 3 phase at home so I've only got an R Tech 50A plasma. Third unfortunate event as it turns out is that I think partly due to the composition of the metal and the distance from the earth lead contact (91 cm) the plasma was unable to pierce, but did gouge quite deeply.
L80 turns out to be quite a hard metal, even before the heat from the plasma may have affected things. I tried a Dewalt Extreme drill bit (which normally makes mincemeat of mild) on it and it hardly made an impression. The drill was to see if I could provide a pilot hole for the plasma so the slag has a chance to blow through. No such luck there then.
So tomorrow I will be asking a friend who might have an Oxy set up and invetigating renting a bigger plasma
Then comes the fun of moving the parts from London to my house in Surrey and deciding how to approach welding it. My MIG isn't beefy enough but I do have a 210 AC/DC TIG with MMA. Not tried stick before but one has to learn at some point...
Bonus is my slightly ridiculous on-board air setup for the Defender has noo issues at all running the plasma. Despite still having a couple of leaks in the system it still kept cutting in and out because it was compressing so much air, bear in mind this is with a piddly (and largely unnecessary) 10ish litre tank.
For those that are interested the rollers were knocked together with some box section, some 16mm bar turned down slightly and some 20mm box to sleeve it with some sack trolley wheels (£8/ pair).
Well, today I was finally able to start on it. First challenge: get the thing onto the rollers I'd made. Some slightly sketchy use of a trolley jack and bottle jack got it off the pallet it was strapped to and onto the rollers.
That is 273cm long, 20" OD and 20mm wall L80 spec casing. Rough calculations put it around the 800kg mark.
So once it was on the rollers and as I had the plasma in the 110 I thought I'd see what happened. Luckily the lab this is outside has a 400A per phase 3 phase supply coming in so electricity is not an issue. Unfortunately though I'd forgotten consumables at home so was left with what was on the torch. Second unfortunate scenario was I don't have 3 phase at home so I've only got an R Tech 50A plasma. Third unfortunate event as it turns out is that I think partly due to the composition of the metal and the distance from the earth lead contact (91 cm) the plasma was unable to pierce, but did gouge quite deeply.
L80 turns out to be quite a hard metal, even before the heat from the plasma may have affected things. I tried a Dewalt Extreme drill bit (which normally makes mincemeat of mild) on it and it hardly made an impression. The drill was to see if I could provide a pilot hole for the plasma so the slag has a chance to blow through. No such luck there then.
So tomorrow I will be asking a friend who might have an Oxy set up and invetigating renting a bigger plasma
Then comes the fun of moving the parts from London to my house in Surrey and deciding how to approach welding it. My MIG isn't beefy enough but I do have a 210 AC/DC TIG with MMA. Not tried stick before but one has to learn at some point...
Bonus is my slightly ridiculous on-board air setup for the Defender has noo issues at all running the plasma. Despite still having a couple of leaks in the system it still kept cutting in and out because it was compressing so much air, bear in mind this is with a piddly (and largely unnecessary) 10ish litre tank.
For those that are interested the rollers were knocked together with some box section, some 16mm bar turned down slightly and some 20mm box to sleeve it with some sack trolley wheels (£8/ pair).