Anything welding

Thats one hell of a paper towel holder

 

I get a little dirty touching parts and crawling on shit sometimes but man is it better than getting burns and breathing in smoke all day

 

Dude, that's a great idea!

Our current one is pretty bland

 

I am getting better at this welding thing.
Check out my latest custom exhaust.

 

Practice makes perfection...

 

What plants have ya been to?

 

Power plants all around south texas, few in Oklahoma, and like 5 different ones up in VA as well.

worst one of all time being a trash burner. I will literally live under a bridge and sell meth before ever working at a trash plant ever again lol.

 

you're thinking of brazing-- that's most like soldering.

welding is more akin to 'adding' molten steel, as well as melting the metal parts to affix two formally-separate pieces together.

as you're discovering, much of the cost isn't the actual welding, but the cutting, and preparation for the replacement.

by doing all the cutting and prep yourself, you can cut out most of the cost.

for removal, all it's going to take is a 4.5 grinder with a cutoff wheel to remove the bung(start high), and then some work with the same grinder and a flapper disc to sand off the remaining part of the weld, smoothing it back out to the main exhaust tube.

then it's really just a matter of them welding the new bung to the prepared exhaust tube.

 

Thank you for the response and suggestion. So what I ended up doing today was use my sawzall with a carbide blade to cut the welded bung off. My hopes were to cut the welded bung off enough to expose the original bungs stud holes to allow me to drill and extract the broken stud which is what I really wished I could have been able to do in the first place. I snapped a couple of pictures of what I'm dealing with after my cut. Now my plan is just to grind it down to a flat enough surface and cut off all of the sloppy weld around it, extract and tap the stud holes if needed.



You can see my cut wasn't dead on straight and I cut into the original bun just slightly But I'm hoping that I'll be able to grind this down to a flat surface to expose the two original stud holes. With that said, I don't have a grinder so I'm looking at buying one but just a small little one, would you guys say that the Milwaukee right angle grinder is good enough for this small job? I might have an opportunity of getting one brand new for $100 that I'm sure I'll probably use for other small projects. And if so what attachment would you recommend for it? It allows for 1-3in discs. Or should I use something bigger?

I just re-read what you said about the "flapper disc" so I'll just need to get myself a 2inch flapper disc attachment to sand it down enough to get to the original stud holes. So I may not require any welding. Is this what you would do?

 

Milwaukee makes good tools, but if this is your main purpose for getting a grinder. I'd go to HF and get a corded one for about a 1/4 of the Milwaukee cost.

 

I agree with your idea. Recently I started my transition from pneumatic to cordless by buying Milwaukee power tools so my eyes. Although I would definitely use it for this right now, I'm sure I will find other uses for it later down the road, same as the other real expensive purchases I've made I'll be sure to put them all to good use.

 

I would've used a Milwaukee cut-off tool

Angle grinders are 4.5" and up, the small cut-off tool runs 3" discs

I have one and have used it a lot for really small bits I've had to cut off in the past

 

To make the cut? Or to grind it down? I'm still needing to grind it down and clean it up. Thinking of getting the Milwaukee right angle grinder and use 2" flapper discs that @soundman98 recommended to grind it down flat and cut off discs to cut the slop weld left behind and clean it all up afterwards. At least that's my plan

 

Would've* to cut.

I have no experience with a right angle grinder but any angle grinder (after cutting the main piece off) would make quick work of that. Basically you would've finished it all yesterday

I'm a huge Milwaukee fan with a bunch of Fuel tools (hand tools as well) but when it comes to angle grinders, there's nothing wrong with an HF special or even a cheap one from Lowes or Home Depot; you end up with 4-5 angle grinders anyway each with different wheels for convenience.

 

Looking at it closely once more, yeah I'd be cutting more off with the small cut-off tool I mentioned.

One cut here -



Then another one here -



Flip and repeat as needed on the other side to get the pieces off that overlap the original piece.

 

I have the HF corded and cordless for exactly this reason, and I use the hell out of both especially the cordless.

 

I've got 1 DeWalt, 2 Milwaukee, 1 Metabo HPT, and 1 HF angle grinder

My go-to is the green one, wife bought it for me when we were at Lowes and I've beaten the shit out of it; still runs like new

 

Have 4 of the metabos an one dewalt.

And a small pneumatic for the 3" rolock wheels

 

i can understand trying to salvage the original bung instead of dealing with other people/services. my advice was centered around the idea of grinding down to raw tubing and replacing the bung entirely. to save part of it takes a slightly different approach.

my first concern is the angled cut on the existing flange. it's hard to make it out in the pictures-- do you think you can still save the flange for a proper sealing surface? in the pictures, it appears like it's somewhat deep on the 'lower' side, and i'm not entirely sure it can properly seal anymore.

if it can be saved, i would still mostly grind the rest away with a flap disk. i'd recommend sticking with the 4-1/2" range. 7" tends to be too costly, and 3" or lower, in my experience, tends to be more for 'detail' work, and doesn't do as well with long extended grinding.

i understand what kwikvette is saying about cutting notches into the weld to remove it with cutoff wheels, but i'm not sure it's all that much faster than only using flap disks to grind the area away...

i normally use 40 grit flap discs-- it's a moderate balance between a fast cut and a smooth surface. and i highly recommend the low-mid-range harbor freight grinder
$30 almost every other day at work i alternate between using either that grinder, or my cordless milwaukee, depending on how deep i'm getting into a project. many of my co-workers use dewalt, metabo, or milwaukee grinders. that hf works just as well as any of them for a fraction of the cost. i've been extremely impressed with it. i just bought a second one for home use.