Harbor Freight Flux Core welders 2

[HomeBrew2]

I thought it best to withdraw from the other thread due to the 'Fraidy Cat Club / Safety Police and I seemed to be detracting from the original posters intent.

I had to bring up some archives of my older projects so here is my first with the el cheapo HF 90A wire welder:
I got a decently priced ABS canopy off eBay a year or so ago. It just had individual mounts that clamped to each side of the ROPS. Worked fine but chattered quite a bit and deflected badly when I ran into an oak tree limb or the garage door header. I added the 2 cross braces to tighten it up. The welds look poor, in my view, but I smacked them with a 3# hammer after each weld and have been using it (read: running the canopy into stuff for some time now) and it has worked out worlds better than before. I cleaned the weld area and painted ... everything looks better painted ... now everything is covered with dust though.

 

[HomeBrew2]

My next project was my pipe fence entrance. I have a nice OLD 225A tombstone AC buzz box but due to lack of interest of hauling it and my 5500W Generac generator out, I thought I'd try the HF hot glue gun run by my little Honda 2000W inverter generator. It was 105°+ so my attitude and ambition were low. I welded the cross braces to the posts as fast as I could get into position for each pipe joint. The gate posts are 3" sch 80 and the others are 2" sch 40. The braces are 1.5" sch 40. I ran a table fan behind the welder cuz I was in no frame of mind to have it cut out due to heat ... it never did. Again, the welds look poor but each was smacked with an 8# hammer after welding (prior to the next weld) and all survived. I don't run any bulls here so, that was good enough for me.

 

[HomeBrew2]

Next I had to run some poly drip line across my drive so I wanted to slip it thru a steel pipe. Unfortunately, my pipe stockpile came up short and I had to glue a 9' piece to a 5' piece. I clamped them onto a piece of angle iron to keep the pieces straight. Welds were good. Plenty of traffic over the pipe and is working well.

 

[HomeBrew2]

Forgot the pic for previous post ...

 

[HomeBrew2]

Next was to add a few beads to the underside of my brush forks that I found that I had forgotten when I made them last year. The forks are 16 ga 1"x2" tube, quite strong for the total weight and do everything I need.

 

[HomeBrew2]

Next was just an experiment with welding material thicker than was intended for the machine ... a 1/2" bolt to a 1/4" plate to a 2" pipe. After completion, I noticed I got one of the bolts cockeyed but the 8# hammer fixed that and the weld was unaffected as anticipated.

 

[HomeBrew2]

Lastly, until I find other stuff to use it for, was to replace the leg extensions on an old table saw that I resurected from a field many years ago. It was a rusty mess then and isn't getting any better. I cut the bolts that held the old legs on then cut pieces of an old bed frame for the new ones then added some 1/4"x3"x3" feet.

 

[HomeBrew2]

So, it's been a while since I had to stop real work with the tractor and cobble up something. I have a 2" receiver hitch on my offroad golf cart and have pulled a mini-pickup bed trailer with it but have a junky garden-type trailer that I needed a little pin-type hitch for. The pic shows the welds attaching a 2" x 2" x 1/16"wall tube to a 2" x 2" x 1/4" piece of angle. This was not really possible for me to do with my tombstone with 1/16" rod so, the little HF welder earaned it's keep once again. Yes, all the steel was dirty, rusted and I was under the influence but the danged welder did a "usable" job (I chuckedup the wire wheel in the drillpress just to see the welds better)

 

[Soundguy]

What size toombstone do you have? ( and why was it not possibly to be welded with a stick? I've made plenty of welds with material in that size range using 1/16 and 5/64 rod on a 70a welder. Seems like a steady hand and 3/32 6013 rod on a bigger tombstone set to low range should work too?)

Soundguy

 

[HomeBrew2]

I have the ol' standard Lincoln. If you have seen the pix (link below) of my brush forks, I did them (all 16ga 'new' tubing) with the tombstone w/ 3/32" 6013. It was a nightmare, erratic sticking and burning. I concluded that I really need to renew the electrode holder, clean all internal connections to be able to use the very low amperages. It sat for many years in unknown conditions before I got it 15 years ago. No fault of the machine just my lack of attention to it ... much easier to spend money than do maintenance