Stuff you have made today

henry Kadzielski · Apr 30, 2021

My two cents worth. have been preparing for the next big / er alli job, some pontoon for a 'localish' hire drive yourself bbq party pontoon sort of thing. Alli arrived yesterday and have had the drawings and dxf's for over a week now.

Onto the table it goes and press the button and it should cut, yes, well no, not quite. After a few years in service it broke a wire for the ohmic sensor and was giving an emergency stop. That fixed and all should be well, well no again. Started marking first, well again when it did the marking 'marking T's it tripped the drive controller on one of the 'X' axis motors, had to lower the accereration and then was fine. Cut 4 sheets of 1830mm by 6100mm by 6mm thick at 45amp setting, travel speed 1700mm / min.

Well almost cut the 4th sheet had to change the consumables just as this vid stopped. The tip was blocking up with alli bits and as a result torch height would finally tip the limit. Replaced the consumables and back to perfect cutting and no crap inside the nozzle shield.

Hood · Apr 30, 2021

Looking good @henry Kadzielski
Couple of questions though? Why are you using the lower amp consumables? I would have cut it at my max 80Amps and @ 5000mm/min.
Are you using G61, Exact Stop?

Arc Tourist · Apr 30, 2021

Brad93 said:
Get a bottle of 25% helium

Munkul said:
Nah I'm migging everything else
I would like to try it, but not for the up front cost of a bottle... Wouldn't even know where to get it from tbh.
........................................

Take your Tig down to the greeting card shop, they fill balloons there. :whistle:

optima21 · Apr 30, 2021

the hydraulic tappets on my car are getting a bit noisy so I decided that I'd give cleaning them a go. getting the middle bit out seems to end up with you getting a sore hand from bashing the tappet down against something and hoping it falls out. I was struggling to get 3 out this way so made one of the worlds simplest tools........a wooden stick :laughing:

cut a flat bottomed hole in a piece of wood a couple of ft long so that the tappet can held in it and the cut the piece of wood so that you can clamp the tappet in place with a couple of studs and some nuts.

and it worked first hit without getting a sore hand, and because the piece of wood give me more hitting force as the end will travel faster than my hand, it makes the job easier but also split the wood too by the studs......just wish I'd thought of this earlier today.

Blue Chips · Apr 30, 2021

Let there be light...

I've found that having adequate illumination on the work area makes it easier for me to see the intended path while welding. I have a large-ish LED work light that does the job in most cases, but it's kind of bulky and not as portable as I'd like, so I cobbled together a simple gadget to shed some extra light on shorter welds, or on welds in tight spaces. I bought a low-cost (about £22) magnetic-base stand with an adjustable arm (which would typically be used to hold a dial indicator) and used a pipe clamp to mount an LED torch to it. To protect the glass torch lens from spatters, I cut a bunch of round polycarbonate discs from an old welding helmet lens protector and made a simple holder for the discs, which I just slip on over the end of the torch. When a disc gets enough spatter on it, I would just replace it. This magnetic base/arm was cheap enough that I think it will remain dedicated to this purpose, saving my higher-end bases for dial indicator use.

This is NOT a new idea, of course. I've seen all kinds of auxiliary lighting approaches, off-the-shelf as well as DIY, but it was quick and easy, and it does seem to help quite a bit.

(Note: Some time ago, I tried clamping an LED torch directly onto a MIG torch, using a photographer's clamp and a ball swivel clamp, which actually worked fairly well, but it had its limitations. It was awkward for getting into tight spaces, and I couldn't always get the angle of light that I wanted on the weld path.)

To test my little LED torch lighting gadget, I cut several pieces of mild steel, cleaned them up, and beveled the edges as I might do to prepare for welding a butt joint.

The photos below show MIG welding the test joints, without and with the extra light from the LED torch. The joints in both photos had identical bevels.

My usual disclaimer: I do not guarantee the safety, efficacy, or applicability of the devices, designs, or ideas I have described here. Any use of these devices, designs, or ideas is entirely at your own risk.

Edit: I just wanted to add that for good visibility it's worth experimenting with lighting angles to produce the maximum visual contrast in the joint being welded.

Cobbler · Apr 30, 2021

@Blue Chips, there is a commercial made light that fits on the mig torch. I was given one, I don’t use it often, but now & again it’s handy. Expensive for what it is, I’m not sure if I could justify buying one.

Blue Chips · Apr 30, 2021

Cobbler said:
@Blue Chips, there is a commercial made light that fits on the mig torch. I was given one, I don’t use it often, but now & again it’s handy. Expensive for what it is, I’m not sure if I could justify buying one.

Thanks! I've seen that product, and I've often wondered if it would be bright enough to illuminate the weld path while welding, or if it's more useful for positioning the torch in dark areas prior to actually striking the arc. What has your experience been?

Cobbler · Apr 30, 2021

Blue Chips said:
Thanks! I've seen that product, and I've often wondered if it would be bright enough to illuminate the weld path while welding, or if it's more useful for positioning the torch in dark areas prior to actually striking the arc. What has your experience been?

I replaced a couple of outriggers on my sons Land Rover & was working into a dark corner underneath. It was ideal for that, but the same result probably could have been achieved with a work light. It was nice, being fitted to the end of the torch it spotlighted just the work area. If I lost it, I would think twice about rushing out & buying one, but if one turned up at Christmas instead of a pair of socks I wouldn’t be disappointed. I hope that makes sense.

Guzrik · Apr 30, 2021

Would it be a good idea to attach LED strips to the welding helmet?
Or a headtorch? Did anybody try this? Would save me the time and disapointment maybe.

Edit, never mind this thread says it all:
https://www.mig-welding.co.uk/forum/threads/welding-helmet-lamp.112061/

henry Kadzielski · May 1, 2021

Hood said:
Looking good @henry Kadzielski
Couple of questions though? Why are you using the lower amp consumables? I would have cut it at my max 80Amps and @ 5000mm/min.
Are you using G61, Exact Stop?

firstly good evening @Hood
Was always told that for the best cut to use the lowest amp consumables. That also means a lower gantry speed, which on my case means a lot less mass (gantry weight) being thrown around (gantry weighs and I'm only thinking over 200kg). This also reduces the 'Newton' effect (to every action there is an equal and oppsoite reaction) which in short makes the table shake

. I can and have used the 65 amp consumables and we go much faster, but my above problems get worse. I have replaced a couple of Gecko drives and have roughly tuned them but they may need much better tuning so as not to get drives tripping and machine stopping on the very sudden direction changes. This can all be looked at a later stage, if we need to go faster to improve our production rate. At this stage we can mark and cut out one of these sheets in just over an hour. Our material handling needs to improve greatly and have a vaccume lifter coming with air tilt which will speed up loading and unloading for me and also make it possible for me to handle these big sheets by myself. The Nitrogen generator is supposed to arrive from Italy early June so that will also improve the surface finish of the alli during cutting.
It would seem that I am gearing up for more of this and you would be correct. It is much easier in the workshop cutting these bits for myself and others than climbing in small boat engine rooms. My hands are also much cleaner :thumbup:

Are you using G61? Well I have no idea what that is, can you enlighten me on this, every day is a learning day!

Hood · May 1, 2021

My gantry is obviously a good bit lighter than yours especially now it is a much smaller span, only 1.5m or so now, previously it was 3m. Not had any issues with it but fastest I have cut so far is 9 or 10m/min on thin(ish) stainless.

G61 is exact stop, it means that at the end of each line of code the axis decelerates to a stop before accelerating for the next. It looks like yours is doing that and that could be contributing to your issues with higher speed.

G64 is Constant Velocity and the axis don't come to a stop at each line of code so you get smoother motion. There is a drawback however, the slower the acceleration of your axis the more corner rounding you will get but as long as you have decent acceleration it should be fine.

Here was mine cutting some Alu the last day, this was at 5000mm/min I think.

henry Kadzielski · May 1, 2021

One thing that I did notice with cutting the alli plate is that on long runs, with my table, the alli when hot does deflect / bend / warp and can creep over the table subsequently cutting parts not to size. So far not a big problem but a problem nonetheless. I can see where a water table like you have would improve this issue. When cutting 'S' or when running back (direct reversing) on a cut or marked line is where I am having problems. After slowing down the acceleration it has cured this issue, well temporarily at least. I will have to investigate motor tuning / accelerations to fine tune this and get it better. At the moment there's not that much cutting to do so all is fine. If and when we need to speed up, I will look at it then, for now it's :thumbup:

.

Hood · May 1, 2021

henry Kadzielski said:
One thing that I did notice with cutting the alli plate is that on long runs, with my table, the alli when hot does deflect / bend / warp and can creep over the table subsequently cutting parts not to size. So far not a big problem but a problem nonetheless. I can see where a water table like you have would improve this issue. When cutting 'S' or when running back (direct reversing) on a cut or marked line is where I am having problems. After slowing down the acceleration it has cured this issue, well temporarily at least. I will have to investigate motor tuning / accelerations to fine tune this and get it better. At the moment there's not that much cutting to do so all is fine. If and when we need to speed up, I will look at it then, for now it's .

Aye, the slower you go the hotter it gets and the more it warps. I found that out when my TecArc was having issues, It was a slow degrading so I never really noticed until I clamped the leads and found it was dropping down to about 40 amps during progression of the cuts. I had been lowering the feed to compensate but I hadn't really realised until I looked back at old code and saw I had been quite a bit faster. Anyway with the slower feeds the warping was quite bad, always straightened itself out when cooled but could be problematic when cutting as occasionally it was that bad the torch would hit it as it passed over on its way to another start. When I got the Jasic and bumped up the speed the warping stopped and that was on the last table with downdraught.

To see if you are using Exact Stop or Constant Velocity look at your code and see if there is a G61 or a G64 in it, if neither have a look at the Gerneral Config page and see if it is set to Constant Vel or Exact Stop, see pic below.
If Exact stop then might be worth your while trying in Constant Velocity on a test piece to see the difference.

henry Kadzielski · May 1, 2021

Thanks for that @Hood. From memory it is set to constant velocity, but going home now with the terrorists and have to feed them pizza as that was the deal for them to be with me today and help, unload the table and move the cut up skeletons to the small truck to take to the scrap yard :doh:

I will check tomorrow or on monday!

Hood · May 1, 2021

Your code can change it to one or the other but it will change back after a restart or it could be changed back by the code as well. So best looking in the code first to see if there is a G61 or G64 or both.
Opening the code in Notepad will let you quickly search via the Edit> Find option.

Kram · May 1, 2021

Guzrik said:
Would it be a good idea to attach LED strips to the welding helmet?
Or a headtorch? Did anybody try this? Would save me the time and disapointment maybe.

Edit, never mind this thread says it all:
https://www.mig-welding.co.uk/forum/threads/welding-helmet-lamp.112061/

It made a massive difference for me. Back in October I bought the TIG, and it was dark at any hours I was awake enough to do welding, but it also helps to clean the lens more often..

I did intend this to be temporary andnthen add some LED strips but I doubt it would be much improvement, so I wont.

www.mig-welding.co.uk/forum/threads/stuff-you-have-made-today.67127/post-1680117

Dr.Al · May 1, 2021

Today I continued to imagine that my workshop is bigger than it actually is. This time by making a "fair weather bench". I'd been getting frustrated at the amount of faff involved in getting the trestles and a board out of the shed if I needed a bit more working space on sunny days. Also I'm never very happy with how rickety the trestles-and-board combination is. My trestles are relatively heavy duty (although I bought them more because they can be adjusted to be a comfortable height for a tall person, unlike most), but they're not exactly sturdy.

Anyway, today my bench got an extension. I cut some grooves in the bottom of the end of my bench and set some 30 × 30 × 2 mm box section into it with four steel clamps to hold it in place:

I then built a simple frame out of 25 × 25 × 2 mm box section and another one (for the legs) out of 20 × 20 × 2 mm box section. This frame slides (about 400 mm) into the box section fixed into the bench.

At the moment I haven't added a diagonal to hold the legs vertical as it doesn't seem to need it. The "hinge" is just an M8 bolt through both pieces with a nut either side of the top frame so that the leg section swings freely but the screw won't move: