Welding Tips and Tricks

Every year our shop participates in The Festival of Trees in Detroit which is a showcase of trees designed and decorated by professional designers, florists, decorators and us, carpenters and welders. The festival is a fundraiser for Childrens Hospital of Michigan. All the trees and labor and supplies are donated by the participants. The trees are auctioned off to the highest bidder and the proceeds go to the hospital.

This past year, I decided to build my own tree out of aluminium. The theme for the tree was The 12 Day's of Christmas. The whole frame of the tree was built and welded out of 1" and 1/2 tube, 1/8th rod ,1/8" flat stock and 1/4"plate . The tree was over 8 foot tall so it had to be built in 2 sections to fit in my van. The tree is 4' wide at the bottom and tapers in to 6" at the top. It also spirals up.

You can only post 3 pictures at a time so here are some more. I also had to make some bases for the "maids a milking" so I cut out a plywood template and used a plasma cutter to cut the bases out of plate.


I also used a planetary ring roller to roll the flat stock and to try to get the taper in the rod. If I had to do it all over again, I would have annealed the rod because it was a huge pain in the a$$ to taper it smoothly.

Over all it turned out pretty good. We got an "Honorable Mention" at the festival

That's pretty cool. Congrats on the hon. mention.

I've never worked anywhere that was willing to participate in anything like this. It's not that they weren't aware. I've pushed to get in "Kinetic Kontraption" races, but nobody wanted to keep the lights on after 5, much less contribute consumables or materials. (Cheap, selfish bastards!)

Nice work!

Steve

nice! I'm from up north by traverse city, there's a local version of the festival of the trees up there. to be honest, I forgot about it until you mentioned this, I haven't been since I was like 12. I'm sure the one in detroit is more impressive, though. I'll have to ask my fiance if she ever went (she's from the detroit area)

that's a beautiful tree. so perfectly done and the decorations are really awesome. i wanted to create something new, but im not so artistic. i'll definitely buy an artificial christmas trees this coming December.