Finally! A topic I have specific experience with! I used to do maintenance on an aggregate plant. When using AR plates I did all my joining with 70 series electrode, generally 7018. If I was especially concerned about abrasion in the area I would cap with a hard face electrode, but to be honest I do...

I was on a while ago asking about some structural welds I had. I got some great advice, especially from jpence and a couple other guys. I just wanted to let everyone know how it turned out. I've been running hard and haven't had much time to get online the last six months or so. My inspector was oka...

Working on a mobile job, running the Extreme 12vs, all is going well. Start burning back, adjust voltage/feed, back up and running, start pushing, turn wire down, go to lunch, all goes to hell. Find wire box is dropping voltage and spend the afternoon grinding out weld, trying again, checking connec...

I am not sure what you can get for your torch, but I can assure you on most plasmas changing the torch is no harder than changing a MIG gun. When we first got our plasma table, we ran our TD Cutmaster 51 on it as we were only processing 16ga, so we switched from one torch to the other three or four ...

When I learned how to weld, I got 100 lbs of 7018 and a pile of scrap and burned it over a weekend, then went to it at the quarry. My dad didn't know how to weld, so I took a lot of advice from the Haynes "How to Weld" manual you get at Home Depot. Not actually a bad book for a beginner. W...

I have a daughter that had to come to the shop with me when I worked weekends from the ages of 5-7. Single dad pro-tip: if you put your kid in WAY oversized arc gloves, like the women's smalls, it cuts WAY down on how much stuff they pick up. Also, if you get farrier's aprons, you can cut those thin...

I'll throw in my $.02. We have a Migmaster 275 and a Millermatic 252 on opposite benches. First thing I'll say is that Migmaster is never going to sound as smooth as that Miller. Most of my operators prefer the Millermatic. Personally, I can switch back and forth with no problem, but when we started...

I got a new one: Sitting in operations meeting yesterday, boss asks about a project due out Friday. Everyone turns and looks at me...I'd never heard of the project. Project manager says "I'll try to get you drawings tomorrow or the Wednesday so you can get material here Thursday, does that leav...

Your price isn't too bad. We pay about 38.00 for a 20 ft stick, but we buy it a hundred sticks at a time. Depending on how big of a cabinet you want to build, or how many splices you are willing to make, you may want to see if a local shop could sell you some scrap. I know a lot of handrails are 11g...

It was out by Warrensburg. We were from the Kansas City area. I believe a friend or family of the teacher owned the property so he and some other teachers would take groups of kids out every weekend to show us how archeology worked and show us the sort of conclusions you could come to from a rubbish...

I just did some additional peeking around. Apparently, most glasses melt at 1500-2700 degrees, 4500 for some oddball applications. I looked into silver/bronze solder and found that most solders melt below 450 degrees, and any applications where you are melting above 450 are considered brazing, so I ...

Unless you're doing some SERIOUS cutting with a manual plasma, you can generally get by with a pretty reasonable sized compressor. When we set up our new shop and got a plasma table, we upgraded our compressor, but before that, we used a 33 gallon Craftsman compressor and as long as we weren't cutti...

I put a cheater in my hood. Doubling the size of everything has made it much easier for me to see the puddle, my slag, and where I am biting in and where I am not. If you're having trouble with MIG, try turning the voltage down and cold-lapping some solid wire. I have people I am teaching do this, t...

I have a friend who used to make things like this. That one may not be made the same way, but here's how he did it. He'd bend pieces of roundstock into shapes he liked, then braze them together. Later he got into TIG welding them together but that's neither here nor there. Next, he would actually bl...

We take our TD 51 on the road with us all the time, feed it from one of those cheapie Home-Depot Rigid gas powered compressors. Mounted dual driers on the machine and change them frequently, especially when we're working in the south/southeast. No problems with it in three or four years. One thing I...

We do all our handrails in-house and I gotta say I agree with Otto 100%. We've done enough with the 75/25 that we can keep the welds just about flat, hit them with a flap disc and they're done. We have played with tri-mix gasses and had good luck, but the boss doesn't like to spend the money. I've b...

Everything I build goes to fire/rescue training...firemen can destroy anything. Good for job security, not good for making you feel good about your work.

We have two TD plasmas, as well. We have the Cutmaster 51 (been replaced by the 52). We can cut up to 1/2 with it at 40 amps. The 51 was on the plasma table for a while and did pretty good. Our other is a Cutmaster A120, it's the automated model. It does excellent, will plunge 3/4 and edge start on ...

We have some momentary connections, 5/8" to 1/2" plate. I think I have four joints where the 5/8" will be tying to 3/4". From what I found playing with the T-1, even outdoors in less-than -ideal situations, this seems well within it's capabilities, it is a seismic rated wire, and...

It's a good industry. Meet some great guys in the field, and most importantly the customer really appreciates what you do for them. Get into some interesting things now and again, and of course watching the fire props fire off is always exciting.

So, I was going to run a job out in CA using E71-T1 as I stated in an earlier post. Got a call today, got a new inspector, and he says I should run T8 unless I feel like putting up wind screens, or having problems with him. Original fella had no problems as long as porosity didn't become an issue. I...

Fire/Rescue trainers. Lotsa travel. Mostly our shop does rails/stairs for training towers. We do do some of the confined space/rappel props and whatnot.

I think I got it figured out. Basically, we're treating the plasma as a shared asset. While we're a small construction company, we have a national footprint as we operate in a niche market, therefore we have a graphic designer that does advertising/phamplets/trade show stuff etc... That's where the ...

We've been using the silicon half-masks, they fit under a hood pretty well. The boss-man wants me to look into the speedglass and miller respirator packs, as we recently started welding a lot of galvanized channel. The price on those really makes me cringe. The more I price them, the more I like my ...

I gotta agree with shadow - those 140s are a delight to run, especially for price point. We run an Esab Migmaster 275, and a Millermatic 252, both fun machines. Returning to the Esab after running that Millermatic a while, the arc seems harsher, I think it may be time for a liner, though. We picked ...