Great tip! Only a few joints not at right angles. Gas lens plus huge stick out. I'm planning every weld since first view of the drawings.

The welding will be the easiest part. Bending tubes is the worst.

No need to bleed. The only issue with dual gauge flow meters is they won't show no flow if you have plugged or obstructed lines. The Dinse connector hose on my 200 DX has been kinked a time or two :oops: Always shut off the tank valve but that is it. I made the habit of turning off the power after c...

Welding SOON. Right now it is metal massage with a tube bender. One bend is 3" centerline radius on 0.058" wall 3/4" OD tube. Too tight unless inside support so tubes are bent after filling with Woods metal, an alloy of bismuth, lead, tin and cadmium that melts at 158 °F. It bends lik...

I spilled some prep and etch ( phosphoric acid for rust removal) on aluminum and it shined up nicely. Cheap at Home Depot.

If GMAW is the process (aka MIG) , use as little CO2 as possible since it makes welds hard and difficult to grind. Wire meant for easy grind is available but it has limited strength compared to ER 70 S6. On sheet metal, watch grinding heat as it will warp. But this heat can be used to shrink metal w...

He makes good money off the tube but more from tool reviews. Keeping the trash talk off the comments is a good idea BUT he should let trusted commenters post. AvE is the bomb but he intentionally screws up. CE mark isnt chinese export, it is European Conformance.

Brick and mortar is expensive these days. But my lws store is pretty price competitive for parts and filler. Gases are the exception. Argon has gone up 100% in the past 5 years. Still cheaper than the farm store. Odd that ~1% of the atmosphere is argon.

Solar flux the machined surfaces and preheat the whole to~ 500°F, then use high fluidity silver braze. Pack in rock wool to cool slowly.

How about a zinc primer? Carboline is one brand, another is ZRC. Another point is full welding to seal laps where rust will take hold.

Looks great. I've done the same but used a hole saw in a drill press, grinding a flat for the pilot bit..full weld of the miter before drilling. Just halfway drilled. Goes faster too if you can find the right hole saws for the tube wall thickness.

GTAW? A plain motor won't be touched. Motor controllers can be hurt from HF so use lift arc instead.

I fried a triac motor controller with HF doing some overhead welding. Ouch.

I was cleaning my torch hose today and the Dinse connector FELL OFF. It was that loose. As it is an air cooled unit, I was loosing argon and possibly getting air mixed in.

Just another thing to check.

I'm not a regular yet but this looks interesting. I'll ask my teacher this week if I can give it a try. I'm not sure we have the right filler wire on hand. Has anyone tried to just do a fusion weld? :edit: Looks great dunkster! One of the secrets to this, as I understand it, is to light up on the f...

Used engines? With booze in gas, sniff test the fuel tank. If it smells like the alley behind a dive bar, expect to do a full fuel system service with a new carb. If it smells like Minwax Cherry Wood stain, you might be able to save the carb. Even diesel generators suffer fuel woes with the bio fuel...

The most common contamination gas in argon is carbon dioxide. A simple test is lime water. A teaspoon of slaked lime in a quart of water, shaken well and allowed to settle. Pour off a cup of the clear water into a glass and bubble suspected argon through it. If it turns cloudy, you have carbon dioxi...

Wow, a lot to answer. First of all, 120, 110 confusion. The utility provides 120 volts. Depending on load, this may drop to 110 volts at the end of the extension cord. Same with 220, 230 and 240 for single or split phase. Now for three phase, 208 volt IS different as it is two 120 volt legs 120° out...

ok, I'll play ....since my sh!t is starting to look somewhat presentable. :lol: You are too hard on yourself...that is some good looking weld considering the material. I had plenty of ferrous GTAW time when I first tried aluminum. Followed the Dynasty recommended settings and right out of the gate ...

16 amps @ 380 volts? Yes, more than enough for 250 amps GTAW from an inverter machine.

Yes, argon is cryogenic and no amount of pressure will keep it liquid at our comfortable temperature range. Carbon dioxide has a critical tempetature of around 92°F with a critical pressure just over 1000 psi so it is easy to make a cylinder capable of twice that for safely handling super critical C...

Modern steels use basic oxygen when made from molten pig iron. With only pure oxygen burning the carbon, no nitrides can form so brittle transition can be as low as -40°C (or F as that is the one point they are the same) . Much domestic steel is recycled, using electric arc melt with basic oxygen re...

The issue with Liberty Ships was from the Bessemer Steel used making welds temperature sensitive in freezing weather. Welding was far quicker than riveting plus more stream lined and such. So war time expediency and such prevailed. But this was SMAW so stresses were more confined to deposit length d...

Technically, a commutator is a rotary switch used in DC and universal motors to switch polarity of the rotor windings..in the fashion employed by this device, it is a slip ring. Some alternators (nearly all automotive) use these on the rotor. Delco SI alternators have a cartridge slip ring brush hol...

I'm doing something similar. Have been using a Weldcraft RCCS 14 for 5 years but now need foot pedal. The dial is actually a spur gear at around 13 teeth to the inch so I used a 1/2"x 13 UNC tap to thread the inside of a plastic pipe, then cut the pipe into strips to make a rack. Simple and fas...

I'm running a 17 torch with std collet so I made a backwoods gas lens using some fine bronze mesh circles I confiscated from a recreational pharmaceutical user :mrgreen: . Hey, it works! I cab get a bit more stickout without adding rainbow colors to the tungsten. I had planned on getting a stubby ga...

I have welded 1/16" S2 filler rods together to use all the scraps. I usually stop when the filler gets around 2" long. S2 filler is cheap but the local weld shop is 30 miles away. You do what you have to do to finish the project.