ready to melt some metal again

   / ready to melt some metal again #1  

linuxman51

Gold Member
Joined
Nov 26, 2012
Messages
300
Location
Montgomery, AL
Tractor
craftsman lt1000/jd 717a/ mahindra max26 hst
In the midst of a bathroom reno back in Jan, I snagged a new to me welder (my other welder is a lincoln 135), quite a bit beyond my level of welding talent, but the price was beyond right.
151231881.jpg


came with some alu filler rod, some 308L filler rod, a couple different tungstens, some new cups, the torch, pedal, and ground clamp and consumed a chunk of my space limited storage room. The machine is a lightly used lincoln 225 tig unit; one that will probably be the last welder I ever need. I think I paid $1k for it. :shocked:

It sat and collected more dust, until this weekend when I finally re-organized the carport enough to take the time required to hook up an outlet for it (weather proof, since it's outside), and fired it up, and verified that it still lives
151231883.jpg


I wasn't greatly concerned about that, I've known the guy I got it from for a while, and he didn't skip town, so if it was dead he could still be gotten ahold of (literally and figuratively)

I had to wait til monday to get a bottle (pure argon), holiday weekends being what they are (of course, down here, it's been raining for what feels like 4 months solid, so it didn't really matter). Got home after work, hooked it all up, and just picture this piece of aluminum, just with a burned and rounded edge where I knocked down the flashing from whenever it'd been cut on the chop saw (burned, melted, lot of contaminants in the end result because I didn't clean the material first, and of course because I also had the power turned WAAAY too high initally :D )
151231882.jpg


I'm stoked. I don't have a whole lot of stuff that needs this level of attention right now, just a crack or two on the manifold offa the drag car, and I need to upgrade the intercooler on my other wagon so that'll get some attention at some point. My best friend lives down the road & he's got an identical welder (with many more miles on it, and a nicer torch setup and a VASTLY better grasp on how it all works), so I'll be bothering him as I work through all the different ways of doing stuff wrong :dance1:

I also had to build a ramp to get it into and out of the storage room, even with wheels, this thing is quite heavy, and the 5 inch gap between concrete and room is a bit much, esp with the bottle on the back now.

At some point when I get the drag car re-assembled and a longer extension cord to the 220 plug made I'll be able to run it inside the storage room where my metal topped table is. might not be so weather dependent then.
 
   / ready to melt some metal again
  • Thread Starter
#2  
so I promptly wrecked my back after posting this thread, and didn't get much done for a few weeks while I progressed through denial and then sought treatment (nah it's ok, I just over-exerted myself to holy crap I can't sit down without shooting pain I guess I should go to the doc). I acquired a trailer in the midst of all this, a older but reasonably nice aluminum tilt trailer that someone had taken the effort to disable the tilt function (ostensibly because one of the P.O.'s completely wrecked it and tried to repair it and did a very poor job of that). I formulated a plan, and got to work last weekend to repair this and reinforce it, and cutting sweating welding and sunburns ensued (from welding. ouch)

anyway, pics of the mess.
this was a before shot. you can sorta see how the brace is mangled and had been poorly repaired and mangled again, someone.. well it was trash and a trash repair job and we'll leave it at that. in this picture we'd already pushed the brace back out straight.
151821674.jpg


out with the old, in with the new.
151821675.jpg

got some 5 ft sticks of different widths to get a very snug fit, clamped em on over the alu and welded em there

under the torch is the hole left where the old brace had cracked the flooring from the s***y repair job (I don't recall why I had the torch out)
151821676.jpg


used some bar stock to make a plate (more for the practice than anything, but it's also hard to find plate steel on a sunday). I've been told since that I probably had the tungsten out too far while I was doing this. I also discovered that a slight breeze plays havoc with welding using shield gas. both mig and tig.
151821673.jpg


and the end product. the front piece of square tubing is bolted to the jack housing, and the bolts holding the plate go down and have additional plates under the ribbing for the deck to help with any loading going on down there.
151821677.jpg


I didn't partake of any of the aluminum welding on this thing (although I did use the tig torch to melt down some of the bigger blobs of alu filler that I didn't want to grind down smooth prior to building the channel piece)

all of the long welds were done with my Lincoln 135, for time and consistency's sake.

Had to do a test run, tractor content. My buddy shot this (he lives a couple miles up the road)
Who is driving who - YouTube
 
 
Top