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I just wanted to say thanks very much for all of the time many of you have taken to share your experience and insights! I've lurked on here for 3-4 years, finding this site when I was first interested in trying a couple of light welds to replace a quarter panel on a car. The journey of the past several years has been a blast, and I've been able to do things I'd have never imagined. The point in sharing the short book below is that I would never have dared to attempt any of this sort of thing without some of what I learned from you folks... Just saying thanks! Between posts on here and purchases using craigslist I've gone from barely knowing how to oxy / acetylene weld and braze to being able to mig, tig, stick, etc... with the majority of what I play with today being mig or tig on stainless or aluminum. I started with a cheap (crappy mig welder), and soon after bought an old Lincoln ac225 "buzz box". I got rid of the crappy mig and bought a 110 v lincoln 140 that I've tried pretty hard to wear out on sheet metal and then stainless sheet, exhaust tube, and other things. I initially started out with a tank of 25/75 CO2/Argon and when I decided to start doing stainless, based on a link I found on here, I picked up a tank of pure argon and built a "simple" gas mixer using a couple flow meters, two stage regulators, needle valves and globe valves and a mixing tube packed with stainless wool. For stainless I run 1:10 25/75 to pure argon (equating to about 2.5% CO2) and it works great. That way I also already had the pure argon to run aluminum and tig... I've built stainless exhaust systems for a couple cars from scratch, repaired and made all sorts of things and even made a couple small tanks (that don't leak!). I've been able to weld several body panels together (including the back half of my daughter's camaro before I painted the whole thing). More recently, I picked up another small Mig machine (Hobart Handler, still new in box, sitting in a shed for 10 years, for $100), and set it up to do aluminum with a short whip, plastic liner and smooth groove feed wheel. It works great for thin aluminum plate. running off pure argon... and now sits on the cart I put together from pieces of a couple others for the Miler Dialarc HF, my most recent addition, that i bought a short time ago. The dialarc is the black face one with three power ranges and is set up with foot pedal, weldcraft wp-20 torch and cooler (I love Craigslist). After giving what i consider a song for it in running but somewhat dirty / tired condition and the accessories, I took it apart, pressure washed all the dust, dirt and crap out of the interior, cleaned all the connections that had corroded a little, cleaned and flushed the cooling system, rebuilt and modified the cart, etc, etc, etc... and it works like a champ My tig welds don't look like the ones in the textbooks (yet), but they're coming along very nicely and most are not even a little embarrassing any more. In the coming weeks, I'm going to try my first single plain to EFI intake manifold conversion for one of my corvettes and to repair a pair of aluminum cylinder heads that got trashed from a dropped valve... I also plan to built a one piece 4" stainless exhaust set up for one of my boats incorporating a couple of sectioned welded elbows, a cross pipe (to try and quiet it down a little more - sounds a little like a stock car now..), and silencers that I also plan to build myself from stainless tubing and plate. One day I'd like to have a much more powerful mig machine, but considering I've got a total of about $1000 in everything (not including odds and ends, consumables, etc...), and after playing with stick welding with the dialarc am selling my buzz box, I have a lot of capability that has been really useful in my car, boat, cycle and related hobbies (addictions?). Without the many, many posts from board members I found searching, I would never have known which machines to look for (and which to look past), how to go about starting even the simplest techniques. Between you guys and a couple of books, etc... I pretty much learned to weld in my garage... Hope everyone has a GREAT weekend! Cheers!Last edited by wca_tim; 11-02-2013 at 09:41 PM.Reason: misspelled wortds...
Reply:Wow!You have been busy.Weld like a "WELDOR", not a wel-"DERR" MillerDynasty700DX,Dynasty350DX4ea,Dynasty200DX,Li ncolnSW200-2ea.,MillerMatic350P,MillerMatic200w/spoolgun,MKCobraMig260,Lincoln SP-170T,PlasmaCam/Hypertherm1250,HFProTig2ea,MigMax1ea.
Reply:Welcome aboard, glad you finally crawled outta the woodwork.If you don't want to stand behind our Troops, feel free to stand in front of them. |
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发表于 2021-8-31 22:40:24