[JDIGGS82]

I have that same issue myself i typically bid the job way low to make sure i get it then usually kick myself in the pants i was thinking about asking a hundred for the cross but i ask myself who would pay that much for a damn cross that can be built in ten minutes therefore i feel bad selling it for that much when i knew it only took me ten minutes weird thing i have i guess lol

[Otto Nobedder]

I have that same issue myself i typically bid the job way low to make sure i get it then usually kick myself in the pants i was thinking about asking a hundred for the cross but i ask myself who would pay that much for a damn cross that can be built in ten minutes therefore i feel bad selling it for that much when i knew it only took me ten minutes weird thing i have i guess lol

Follow Edison's simple rule, value it to yourself, double it and add ten percent. If the market will bear it, it will sell.

If it sells fast, you're still undervaluing. If it sits, back the price a bit.

But have patience, and market broadly before you decide you're over- or under-priced.

Steve S

[mcoe]

My wife yells at me about the same thing. My goal is to keep things reasonably priced to where people with fixed incomes can afford it. I am too much of a softy when it comes to pricing.

[JDIGGS82]

lMAO SAME HERE ALL THE TIME I HEAR YOUR TIME IS WORTH MORE THAN THAT LOL

[danielbuck]

making a new, larger welding cart. Since I now have two welding machines, and two gas bottles to go with them. This cart will have larger wheels/caster, the smaller ones on my old welding cart were a paint to roll around over even the smallest of cracks or bumps in the concrete. And the new one will have drawers to hold things in.

In the last image, you can see the two welders (the bottles will go behind the welders, looking at the back of the cart in this view) and the drawer above the welders.

Most of the structure is done, need to put some horizontal pieces to hold the welders and the bottles, and mounts for the drawers.

Tubing is 1.25x1.25" .120 wall. Top is a bit more than 2'x3' 1/4" plate.

Breaking in the new PINK HTP welding gun. Why the heck is it pink!? haha!

[Superiorwelding]

You are progressing great. I need to get a 110 welder, would come in handy sometimes. Airgas is building a new facility here and is supposed to be holding a welding competition at their open house. The prize is a little welder, maybe I will compete and hopefully walk home with a new welder.
-Jonathan

Well, Airgas' open house and welding competition was yesterday. The open house was better received that I figured it would be. They had 6 or so vendors including Lincoln, ESAB and Miller. Lincoln had their VERTEX and Miller their Live Arc. My son loved the VERTEX machine. I got to run a 350MP with the Python gun. What was "funny" about that was, I asked to play with it and the rep on their truck looked at me a me said "it's not running right, what's wrong with it?" I looked at their practice welds and told him its out of argon. They had knocked the hose off the machine. Once they got it fixed he came and found me so I cod run it. He then asked me to set the machine for them. This is not bash on Lincoln, rather a observation that why have guys demoing machines that know nothing about the machines?

Anyway, for the welding competition you had a choice to use a Lincoln, Miller or ESAB power source. Knowing the guy running the Lincoln and being most familiar with their machines, I went with them. I have used the S350 power sources before on STT and duel shield flux core but never in tig. Guys, I was EXTREMELY impressed with the very smooth arc on carbon steel!!! I couldn't believe it. Highly recommend the S350 if anyone is in the market
So to the competition, it consisted of two fillets and a lap. You had to run mig and 3/32" 6011 on the fillets and tig on the lap. I aced the mig hands down and did alright on the 6011. When I did the tig I bombed. It went ok but the heat built up and I didn't back off. On top of that, I was doing it free hand so I was shaking like a lead. Over all not to bad though. Once I got don't I saw a few guys walk in from a shop that does exotic metals and I knew I was cooked. They won the machines. I did however place in the top ten so I am as happy as I could be. Better luck next time.
-Jonathan

[AKweldshop]

You are progressing great. I need to get a 110 welder, would come in handy sometimes. Airgas is building a new facility here and is supposed to be holding a welding competition at their open house. The prize is a little welder, maybe I will compete and hopefully walk home with a new welder.
-Jonathan

Well, Airgas' open house and welding competition was yesterday. The open house was better received that I figured it would be. They had 6 or so vendors including Lincoln, ESAB and Miller. Lincoln had their VERTEX and Miller their Live Arc. My son loved the VERTEX machine. I got to run a 350MP with the Python gun. What was "funny" about that was, I asked to play with it and the rep on their truck looked at me a me said "it's not running right, what's wrong with it?" I looked at their practice welds and told him its out of argon. They had knocked the hose off the machine. Once they got it fixed he came and found me so I cod run it. He then asked me to set the machine for them. This is not bash on Lincoln, rather a observation that why have guys demoing machines that know nothing about the machines?

Anyway, for the welding competition you had a choice to use a Lincoln, Miller or ESAB power source. Knowing the guy running the Lincoln and being most familiar with their machines, I went with them. I have used the S350 power sources before on STT and duel shield flux core but never in tig. Guys, I was EXTREMELY impressed with the very smooth arc on carbon steel!!! I couldn't believe it. Highly recommend the S350 if anyone is in the market
So to the competition, it consisted of two fillets and a lap. You had to run mig and 3/32" 6011 on the fillets and tig on the lap. I aced the mig hands down and did alright on the 6011. When I did the tig I bombed. It went ok but the heat built up and I didn't back off. On top of that, I was doing it free hand so I was shaking like a lead. Over all not to bad though. Once I got don't I saw a few guys walk in from a shop that does exotic metals and I knew I was cooked. They won the machines. I did however place in the top ten so I am as happy as I could be. Better luck next time.
-Jonathan

Super exciting!!!!!

[Superiorwelding]

It has been quite a while since I have posted here. We are finally getting back to projects and I thought I would begin sharing pics. The first pic is one of the lifting lugs on this testing frame. The lug is 2" thick and it required a 5/8" bevel with little to no weld sticking out past the plate. There is 3.5" plate that will but up against them so the weld would be in the way. I used our new Fronius SyncroPulse 4000 so I could start figuring this machine out. I am impressed so far for sure. I used spray transfer for the root and fills set at 26.5 volts and 300WFS using Lincoln L-59 .045 wire. I don't know if I just had good settings or to much voltage but that was one smooth arc. For the cover passes I wanted to play around with the synergic pulse. This machine let's you change so much. You can get it dialed in for about anything. My primary concern was to avoid undercut and keep the weld within spec. It came out pretty good. Could always be better but you know how it is. My pulse settings were 24 volts, 250 WFS and 220 amps all approximate. One thing that's nice on the gun is being able to adjust wire speed and/or amperage with a little button. Drawback is the push/pull gun kills your hand after extended use. I will hopefully be posting more about this machine and its features in the future.

As for the structure, this is a test stand for our machine called the Pipeline Inserter. I showed pics of it earlier in this thread. Basically we need to verify that our machine can in fact produce 1.2 million pounds of force to drive 30" pipe up to 5 miles. We only need 890,000 pounds of force to actually get the pipe moving and then it drops dramatically. I probably won't be able to post pics of the finished product but defanently will post as many fab pics as I can. The beam is W36x330 @40' long. The deflection is .030. The unit pictured will weigh 68,300lbs when finished.
Jonathan

[Otto Nobedder]

Jonathan,

Is that essentially the same machine you were posting bad pad-eye welds on when you joined the forum?

It sounds like a machine with the same function.

Steve S

[Superiorwelding]

Steve,
Yes, those pads are on the machine to be tested. In reality the test bed is a overgrown Inserter. As a point of interest, I was talking to the design engineer for the test frame and he said if welded properly these lifting eyes will lift 500,000lbs....each. Can you say over engineered? He also said in places our safety factor is 7/1. I don't think anything will break. When the test bed is completed we will have roughly $280,000 in it and in theory it will only be used once. I already have paint and shrink wrap companies lined up when we are done. Kind of a waste but it was going to be $1million in a independent company building a bed and testing it. Now all we have to do is pay for the independent consultants to come in. This is how they justify having a full R&D facility here in the states. We save them tons of money. There is also talk of having Akron University do a independent study to get recognition out there. Fun stuff!
Jonathan

Edit, here is a better pic of the lifting lug on the test bed.

[dsmabe]

So it was mentioned in this thread about horseshoe art, and was wondering what any of you would charge/pay for this. Also let me also apologize since these are not mig.
Horseshoes tig welded in a v, drilled and tapped to be mounted on a stained and lacquered board inlayed for each horseshoe. Again sorry for the wrong thread, just a lot of talk on horseshoes here and would like some input.

20141017_035256.jpg (44.05 KiB) Viewed 1949 times

20141108_155551.jpg (88.02 KiB) Viewed 1949 times

[jwright650]

Not being familiar with horses, .....what is a horseshoe made out of? Is it just some soft mild steel? Does it weld pretty easily?

[jwright650]

The lug is 2" thick and it required a 5/8" bevel with little to no weld sticking out past the plate.

Nice job stacking those stringers, keeping it flush with the plate. You mentioned a 5/8" bevel, so is this partial pen joint also welded on the other side of the lifting lug the same way?(5/8" bevel filled out flush?)

This^ is right down my ally...I have worked in structural steel fabrication for all of my adult working life.

for example...here is a pic of one of my guys backgouging at my previous employer whom I was with just a few month short of 30 years. Column with full pen base plate to column shaft, then all of the stiffeners at the base plate were also full pen, and to give some perspective, the shear lug that was full pen to the bottom of the base plate is 6" thick. I had to UT the stiffeners one at a time as they put them in because I couldn't get my transducer inbetween the plates.

[dsmabe]

Not being familiar with horses, .....what is a horseshoe made out of? Is it just some soft mild steel? Does it weld pretty easily?

Most are mild steel, some cast iron, and some aluminum. The ones I deal with are mild steel, tig can be a pain sometimes because of "stuff" deep into the metal. If they are very clean then they weld nicely.

[soutthpaw]

Not being familiar with horses, .....what is a horseshoe made out of? Is it just some soft mild steel? Does it weld pretty easily?

Most are mild steel, some cast iron, and some aluminum. The ones I deal with are mild steel, tig can be a pain sometimes because of "stuff" deep into the metal. If they are very clean then they weld nicely.

Nothing clears a shop out like the smell of burning horse $hit:twisted:

[Superiorwelding]

John Wright,
Yes in fact it is a PJP. The engineer was very concerned that we his the 5/8"on all 4 sides. We were not allowed to install them until he measured our bevel. He almost changed it to a 3/4" bevel but I did my best to talk him out of it No sense in welding more than we have to. If you look at the picture you can see a hint of roll over on the bottom weld as well as the top pass. I will be honest in saying I was probably playing around with the settings to much to try to get the nicest bead I could. The bottom pass already had a finish pass under it but in order to get the others to stack right I had to go over it again and was watching the top of the bead and not the bottom. I kicked myself after I was done and saw it but I can't allow the weld to go out any further and it is acceptable so no need in grinding. The top pass was a pure experiment. I didn't even try a practice pieces and that was the result. We have 4 more lifting lugs for the other 40' section so I will try to document those passes better as I know Steve is also interested in lifting and rigging. To be honest again, I used to be very nervous about welding lifting lugs and have slowly gotten over that. I am just as cautious but like a welding test, try not to let nerves get the best of me.

That is a nice column. In a former life I made and painted MANY columns and other structural members. There are days that I still miss it. I always liked the layout more than the welding. It was sense of accomplishment when I layed it out and had everything tacked together for the inspector and he either gave me the go ahead because there was nothing wrong or very little wrong. I was able to get to the point where when I was done laying out and went to get him that he would say "you are good peanut." (my nickname there). While that was flattering I still wanted someone to check. Looks like you and I need to compair notes soon.
-Jonathan

[mcoe]

So it was mentioned in this thread about horseshoe art, and was wondering what any of you would charge/pay for this. Also let me also apologize since these are not mig.
Horseshoes tig welded in a v, drilled and tapped to be mounted on a stained and lacquered board inlayed for each horseshoe. Again sorry for the wrong thread, just a lot of talk on horseshoes here and would like some input.

20141017_035256.jpg

20141108_155551.jpg

Since I have made horseshoe art for 4 years now I will give you some help. We are getting our shoes from our farrier so we are getting them for scrap price. If we have to buy new it cost us about $2 a shoe so we usually charge $5 a shoe for sculptures and usually about $7 per hook for hat hooks and since our horses keep kicking boards off of their stalls we use the beat up old boards as backing for hat racks and charge $5 for the backing extra. Hope this helps.

[mcoe]

Not being familiar with horses, .....what is a horseshoe made out of? Is it just some soft mild steel? Does it weld pretty easily?

Most are mild steel, some cast iron, and some aluminum. The ones I deal with are mild steel, tig can be a pain sometimes because of "stuff" deep into the metal. If they are very clean then they weld nicely.

Tig can be quite fun indeed with horseshoes. We started off with a Hobart mig welder and piece of sheet metal for a table and we sold enough horseshoe art to set up our shop. I have welded them every way I could, mig, tig, and stick and most times I use a 7018. If you want a real challenge try welding aluminum shoes together. We tried, key word tried.

[dsmabe]

I have some aluminum shoes, from what you say I think I might try welding a couple to see if I have any luck with it. It's hard to imagine worst aluminum then what we have at work!

[mcoe]

I am still fairly new to tig welding and new to aluminum so take that for what it is worth but it was absolutely horrible and I have welded some nasty aluminum. I still think a lot of it was me but at the same time it was nasty

[Rider]

we used chokers with wood and rubber softeners to keep from slipping and or cutting, or welded lifting lugs on that could be cut off later!!

[Superiorwelding]

we used chokers with wood and rubber softeners to keep from slipping and or cutting, or welded lifting lugs on that could be cut off later!!

We do have temp weld on lifting lugs we use from time to time. These are permanent. Most of the time we design them to be a part of the piece or machine. I have to ask, if you were using rubber to prevent cutting on your lifting lugs, were you using the best underhook lifting devices? This tells me that you were using straps instead of shackles in your eyes. Don't get me wrong, one is required to use something to keep straps from damage. I am sorry, finishing up my lifting and rigging certs so I am more aware of lifting hazards and problems. Now I will be good for 4 years to train others in lifting and rigging and will be the "qualified" rigger for the shop. I am not downing you at all rather I am curious.
-Jonathan

[weldin mike 27]

Two separate operations. The chokers/softeners go on jobs without lifting lugs, and some jobs have temporary lugs put on them, which would use shackles and or chains.

[Superiorwelding]

Mick,
I am sorry, I thought we were talking about lifting lugs since that's what is pictured. Upon re-read I see what he was saying now. Carry on...
-Jonathan

[GreinTime]

So.... Shouldn't you be considered shop millwright in addition to being "Safety Supervisor"???