just some stuff ive been working on

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Been doing a few things lately.  working on the tubing bender, new floor in the mustang, and some stuff from workpic 1 is some window washing davit covers i built. I built 3 of them all made of aluminum box tubing 1.5X2 3/16 wall-all mig'd.  Got skinned in wood after they left the shoppic 2 Bocci ball scoreboard, wood was waterjetted then stained , built the stands out of 3X5 box tube, welded the brackets on and had power coated in anodized bronze.  the balls ride on 1/8" stainless rod with all thread on each end to tension with some stainless acorn nuts.  I spun 4 copper inserts that ride and plug the holes for the 1/4" all thread.pic 3 water jetting pipe flanges i drew for a local sheet metal shop.pic4 my 5 megapixel camera that takes the worst pictures in the world of my aluminum mig welds. Attached Images
Reply:here is a floor i put into a 66 mustang im building for open track racing.pic 1-floor cut clear to the firewall, ready to peel it away from the rocker panelpic 2 new floor and metal cleaned, tacked in and ready to do the welding.pic3- welding it to the tunnel and trying to melt my face at the same time.pic 4-i welded the entire top and the entire bottom.  These cars are total turds and spot welds are just enough to hold them together.  Ive got some pretty cool ideas to stiffen the chassis up and make the thing actually have some decent handling, one of which is welding all the seams in the car, lots and lots of work.pic 5- the reason the floor needed replacing.  this is california, why is there rust on my floors??? Attached Images
Reply:heres franks bender i finally got around to building.pic 1-building the swing arms, which were water jetted from 1/2" plate.pic 2-my second attempt at the base, welded the wrong peice on first and had to cut it off and redo it.pic 3-attaching the uprights to the base.  Not easy to get everything lined up and square, and in the same plane, but were fabricators, this is what we do and we make it work.pic 4 the brace tacked onpic 5 welding the brace on, i know i know, i should be wearing gloves.The main part is done and lines up extrmely well, everything was cut on either the water jet or mill so all the tolerances are very tight and there is no slop in any of the pins.Im making this bender full hydraulic, have all the peices i need, just need to get fittings and line and make all the mounts and brackets for everythinganyways thats it for now, hope the pictures arent too big, enjoy Attached Images
Reply:Thanks for the pics Drivethru, is that an XMT mounted up high? Have you had any problems with it?
Reply:Originally Posted by drivethruboy54pic4 my 5 megapixel camera that takes the worst pictures in the world of my aluminum mig welds.
Reply:burn-yes it is, xmt304 set up to run the boom weldor.  Has 2 spools, one for steel, one for stainless, its the cats meowWeldordie-i have tryed both those things unfortuneately, i think im gonna turn the camera into an autobody dolly
Reply:drivethru,The pics generally look OK except for the close-up of the weld bead.  As you stated with (some) frustration.As weldordie mentioned, make sure you go into Macro/close-up mode if your camera has one.Also be aware that most point-n-shoots (as opposed to DSLRs) have a varying minimum close-up focus distance depending on what zoom setting you use.  Kind of counter-intuitive, but on my point-n-shoot, if I have the lens set to 'wide' I have a closer minimum-focus distance than if I set the lens to 'zoom-in' (telephoto).Another 'trick' could be to set the camera to Manual-focus mode, if it has that.And you have to make sure there is enough light for the camera to be able to focus and for the exposure to come out OK.  And there has to be -something- for the camera to focus ON.  Plain shiny metal is rather difficult for some cameras to get a focus lock going.  A trick there is to give the camera a focus target of some sort, either in the view you are trying to take the picture of or by adding something in the view to act as the focus target (like a dime/penney/quarter so the camera can 'see' the edge of the coin and have something to focus on).And also set the aperature (the F/stop) to the smallest (the biggest number available, like f/8 or f/16 or whatever the biggest number choice you have as opposed to f/4) in order to try and maximize the depth-of-field (how much of the focused image is actually IN focus closer and farther away that the actual focus point).  In close-ups, the amount of the image actually in focus can be as small as just a few millimeters (fraction of an inch) closer and farther away than the focus point.And steady the camera.  Use a tripod or some other sort of camera rest/support if at all possible.  It takes some skill and practice to even -try- to take a hand-held close-up picture without having some image blur from camera shake.Although it all mostly looks like you were just too close for the camera to get a focus lock on the weld bead close-up.  The best laid schemes ... Gang oft agley ...
Reply:Really want to see how the bender works.  I'm not familiar with them, just what I see at the store, and they don't look as stout as this one."Any day above ground is a good day"http://www.farmersamm.com/
Reply:Moonrise-thanks for the advice, i have already tryed about 90 percent of that though.  The camera is just a turd.  I think the weld bead was actually done with my camera phone.  My old brick of a 2 megapixel camera takes amazingly good pictures, but its huge and its batteries like they are candy.Farmer-the bender is from www.gottrikes.com, it gets great reviews, a couple of guys on this board have built them, and pirate4x4 has had the same results.  Its well designed, fairly easy to understand and totally doable if you have minimal fabrication skills.  I think the plans cost like 15 bucks, well worth it of you need a bender.  I plan to have mine for a long time, which is why im doing a full hydraulic steup on it, and i may send it out to be hardened to help with the wear and tear on it.burn it-i lied its an xmt 350
Reply:That is a lot of nice work.
Reply:more work on the benderpic 1-turning and boring some simple bearings on the lathe for the upper and lower ram mountspic 2-bearings installed on the top endpic3-som plates i drew and water jettedpic 4-lower bearings installed-theres a grade 8 bolt in there now and the bearings wasnt tightened down in that picture.  The spacing between the two bearings when tight is like .050.pic 5- ram installation complete, since the design of the bender uses a different cylinder mine smacks the angled uprights with 1.5" of throw left on the cylinder, but for now im gonna leave it and see if it really hinders the bender or not.next is to get the rest of the hydraulics mounted, start making hoses and then a base with locking swivel casters to move it around, its getting very heavy very quickly. Attached Images
Reply:here are some pics of my "peice of junk chinese welder"pic 1-front panel, sorry for the glare, its very easy to use, but i dont really use the fancy stuff much, just set your current and gopic 2-front of the water coolerpic 3-back side of the coolerpic 4-cart i made-made of bed rails, stuff from our scrap buckets, and i bought a half sheet of 16 gauge for the pans and the bottle rack.  Cant really see the lower bottle mount, but its pretty trick.pic 5-check out the machinists block, scored that thing for super cheap at the local steel surplus guy.  Its huge, heavy, and nice and square.  I drew the top rack in cad, cut it out on the plasma cutter, broke the corners, and filled it with tools. Attached Images
Reply:Drivethruboy54, I am just about to start that same welder from Frank. Snagged some 2 1/2 inch .250 wall square tubing for the chassis. I may just order his bearing set, he still has (or had) a few turned out. When I bought the plans I think they were up to $17 or so dollars. He was right on it when I sent the check, sent me the file in about 4 days along with the sevret code to open and download the file. After making the bending die cap for the H-F bender, trying a tube and seeing that it did, in fact make a smooth non-kinked bend BUT still allowed a small amount of gentle flattening in teh curve, not much but, still there, I have rolled over and agree, a wiper die bender is the safest way. Pro tools or JD2 dies have a well established rep and now, I'm there.Please continue to post your "during construction" shots as I am sucking ideas like a sponge. I went to the scrap metal place and bought a short chunk of 4" channel to use as the inner clamping jig for that frame part.Stew in Reno
Reply:OOps! Sorry "Drivethruboy54, I am just about to start that same welder from Frank. "I meant "Bender" - not "welder", obvious of course.
Reply:I started with his basic frame and now everything is going the custom route.  I specially made my bearings for the working end of the cylinder because i did not care for his design and they wouldnt have worked for my application anyway.  My cylinder is a bit bigger than the A/H one so i had to custom make the brackets to mount the bottom and it had to be pushed out as far as it is to make the whole thing work.Today i drug out the motor/pump  assembly. handle. tank. filter and the fittings are on order.  Not sure when the next progress will be, but it should be fairly soon.
Reply:I wouldn't be terribly concerned about the excess travel on the cylinder if the structure is strong enough to take the full pressure of the cylinder trying to extend to its full travel.  It'll stop when it runs out of travel.  It's not a bind, it's just a limit to travel.I don't like posting pics on other peoples threads, but this will give you some idea, and put your mind to rest.I purposely left about 1/4" excess retracting travel in this design because I wanted the pivot to be tight with no slack when I actuated the cylinder.  It's running at around 2000psi operating pressure, and whacks the stop when it retracts.  The top member is the stop.First time I fired it was a nail biter.  Were the welds good?  Was the design ok?That's why I like the total from scratch mechanical projects like this and mrmikey, and johnson mopar (I'm sorry if I f'd up the nicknames).  It's cool stuff Attached Images"Any day above ground is a good day"http://www.farmersamm.com/