My neighbour came up to help me set-up the TIG welder, that Father Xmas bought me. It's a German unit Stahlwerg with a plasma cutter, Stick welder and TIG capabilities. I had to source a local gas bottle, which added significantly to the cost, but shouldn't cost any more to run.
It is inverter technology so it runs of a normal 16 amp household plug socket. The set-up went well, and Yves had bought me a load of scrap steel, stainless and aluminium to practise with. I spent about 7 hours in the garage trying to make beads, and moving from the steel (easiest) to the stainless and then aluminium. After trying with the ali, going back to the steel is really easy, which builds confidence. I found a lot depended on the temperature and heat getting into the pieces of metal, once the metal was really hot, it was easy to punch holes in it, especially with the ali.
Suffice to say that with loads of practise things are getting easier, and I am getting more used to the machine increasing and decreasing the amps, and switching between AC and DC - AC for the aluminium is supposed to keep the temperature down, but I invariably made crappy welds with the ali, it's OK just running the torch up and down, but adding the filler rod, just made things plat all over the place! I think I need to work on the adjustments of the machine to understand what is going on.
I managed to get proficient enough to try and weld my silencers back together, which I did, and even though it's not pretty the weld is hidden by the carbon sheath, so it doesn't really matter.
Tomorrow's job is to get the belly pan on and then build up from there to get good holes in the new fairing panels.
It is inverter technology so it runs of a normal 16 amp household plug socket. The set-up went well, and Yves had bought me a load of scrap steel, stainless and aluminium to practise with. I spent about 7 hours in the garage trying to make beads, and moving from the steel (easiest) to the stainless and then aluminium. After trying with the ali, going back to the steel is really easy, which builds confidence. I found a lot depended on the temperature and heat getting into the pieces of metal, once the metal was really hot, it was easy to punch holes in it, especially with the ali.
Suffice to say that with loads of practise things are getting easier, and I am getting more used to the machine increasing and decreasing the amps, and switching between AC and DC - AC for the aluminium is supposed to keep the temperature down, but I invariably made crappy welds with the ali, it's OK just running the torch up and down, but adding the filler rod, just made things plat all over the place! I think I need to work on the adjustments of the machine to understand what is going on.
I managed to get proficient enough to try and weld my silencers back together, which I did, and even though it's not pretty the weld is hidden by the carbon sheath, so it doesn't really matter.
Tomorrow's job is to get the belly pan on and then build up from there to get good holes in the new fairing panels.
