Anything welding

I’m always looking for cheaper ways to do things.

 

Oh crap. Duh! On my little ‘70’s jet mill. Raises/lowers the table.

 

working a 3 month shutdown at a chemical plant, been a long ass haul and a lot of hours. Here is some of my work.

 

Your welds are the ones I always looked forward to inspecting since I knew there wouldn't be an issue! Awesome work

 

It's a beaut Clark.

 

Giving this venture more thought.

In my case it would come down to which manufacture has the best local support.

If your buying new Warranty service is it close or a tech needs to fly in and camp out. Last thing needed is having a shop or plant shut down because of no air.

Used good source of parts local or next day possible ?

Company get bought out making finding parts Impossible after working through several layers .

A close source of a portable diesel Compressor to get you up and running able to meet your air needs.

Hours does it run 24 hours in a plant operation 5 days 6 or 7 days . 7 days 365 would be 8760 hours.

I always look at the tax benefits a lease might be the better option.

Best of Luck

 

Thanks! This is good stuff to chew on. I guess I need to do some digging in and around Santa Rosa… this is for a home shop that sees serious use so it might run for several hours a day but not every of the week. I would bet I’d put 500 hours on a year.

 

I see rotary compressors are now made in single phase or do you have 3 phase electric at home.

I was thinking a shop or plant having high CFM needs with 3 phase electric


My electric company wanted $50,000.00 to extend the 3 phase line 1 mile up front we could not have it billed over a few years. Another company built next door we thought split the cost no the electric company wanted another $50,000.00 for them as well.

What do you see as your future air needs being??

In your case downtime would most likely not cost big $$$$ per hour.

 

Yeah - no 3 phase here. PG&E wouldn't even quote it! LOL! So I run everything single phase. The Kaeser SX6 (and SX5, 4) all come single phase so that seemed like a nice quiet option if I could find one used for not too much - but what I'm finding is pretty rough and still $2500-$3k. OUCH. A new 5hp CA Air Tools is under 2k, and these compressors have been pretty solid, but the one little issue I had took forever to resolve - they were very hard to contact, but once I finally reached someone they helped me get it running again. (Didn't even need parts!)

I would like to get a smaller plasma cutter/plasma cnc but that's on the long term wish list, and probably a long way out. Until I figure out a really good brake I'm not doing a lot of sheetmetal in my shop. Right now it's just my little cnc's air blast that kills the compressors. Tripped the breaker yesterday.

 

My first O2 bung. Drilling stainless is a bitch.

 

Get a roto-kut set. You’ll never use a regular drill bit again, at least not on stainless.

 

Why do they always look like fruit loops?

 

Just what did you use to drill the tube??

What flavor Stainless you need to be telling us that ? Yes some can be a royal pain to machine.

There seems to be new blends every month .

 

oh you’re on that proper walk! Steam fitters are the best tig welders hands down. Great welds man! Gotta start practicing my weave more. I heard getting a big 8” piece of pipe is the best way. Weld, then grind smooth and weld more.

post flow of gas. On thin material you can make color like blue w a lot to gold/silver w a little. Just depends on the look you want. I’m still experimenting daily w tig.

I use only 16g 304 from ace race. It’s always very consistent. I drilled w 3 diff 1/4” bits til I got a hole then burned up a unibody to get it to 7/8. Gonna def get one of those sets @KILLINTIME recommended!

 

Hey @koditten there's a guy on Langmuir site designed and cut this out. Sure, it's a copy off a wooden model, but still...

He posted the files if you want to give it a try

Guy does insane projects. He's doing a Christmas ornament theme right now.





Cut one in aluminum too:

 

That's pretty damn, cool! Checking it out now.

Thanks for the tag!

K0

 

If it were me, i would cut the handle out of a single piece of 1/4" and bend it, then bore it for the hub and weld the hub into the handle.

 

I have nothing to functionally add to this thread other than saying i did welding in high school and it was fun as fuck. Did arc, oxy acetylene, mig, and tig. Wouldve been cool to do it as a career

 

Showed my 10 year old how to stick weld Tuesday. I was 10 when my dad showed me.



His weld looked alright for his first time.



Took him with me to put a hitch on a cultipacker yesterday. Let him lay a couple beads.