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A beautiful Weld


Guest butlersZ

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Something's odd. Maybe its how the picture is taken, but the puddles seem to have a small lip as shown in the puddle next to the penny. There's also not much of a contrast between the normal discoloration in the HAZ and the base metal.

 

What base material? What filler? How thick is the material? Why the bevel?

 

I'm not being critical, just curious.

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Guest butlersZ

So how do you tell the quality of an SS weld by color?

 

Yes, the penny is for size comparison and yes, it's TIG.

 

I'm rather new at welding, I have about 800 hours of welding under my belt. I have learned from a lot of people. I have only used MIG and TIG, but never stick welded! I have never tried arc welding with a simple stick welder. It seems almost sacriligious.

 

Please rate those two welds on a scale from 1-10. 10 being perfect, 1 go back to school. I'm in need of a confidence boost for a cherry picker that a friend and I want to build. We want to make one that you can tow behind a vehicle that has one axle with a simple hitch. I was thinking about using an actual trailer frame and strengthening it, then building an engine stand one the front half and a swiveling engine hoist/crane on the back half. That way when done building the engine just swing the crane around,lift it up and drop it into the vehicle. Sounds simple right?

 

I just want to make sure that my welds will hold up to the lifting capacity I want to achieve. I know the metal we would use will not be SS but using that SS sample above being the best weld i could accomplish, you think the welds would hold?

 

I know that the design of the engine stand and crane will be critical to the amount of stress on the welds. I can weld just like SS pics above on regular steel without any problem.

 

I have never built and engine stand or engine hoist before, I just don't want to be on that trailer if the engine would happen to fall due to a weld breaking. Or even worse, have a friend on it! :shock:

 

Anyone have any advice on building a hoist or stand?

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

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Really nice looking weld. I would say that if you could do that all over it would be a strong ass hoist. It really comes down to penatration though. It might be a beautiful surface weld but not penatrate the metal much. What kind of filler rod ws used if any. To get a really good weld usually the two parts are chamfered and then a rod is used to fill the gap as you run the bead. But it is definatley a clean weld. Try hitting it with a hammer too and see how strong it is.

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Looks extremely good!!! Now pratice verticals, overheads, and varying the thickness of your materials. You definitely seem to have the touch and steady hands. Welding is as much an art as it is a science. Again, really nice welds!

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With a weld like that, I would not worry about the integrity of the cherry picker.

With what I have seen lift engines gobbed together with a bizzbox while the welder was half drunk, you could probably pass for a cherry picker to lift components for the space shuttle...

 

Though then what it looks like on the outside isn't what they check...

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Guest butlersZ

Thanks guys, I'm gonna come up with a final design drawing of my engine hoist and engine stand idea and will submit it here and see what you guys think before I build it. I definitely will need the feedback, I want this to be the ultimate hoist/stand. Once built, I'll post pics and such outlining the process. Maybe I'll get a couple HybridZ stickers to label it :P

 

Haven't decided whether or not to use a hydraulic ram for lifting or an electric winch set up or ...What do you guys think??? Or maybe a combination of both using the ram to lift the boom up and down and use a top mounted winch to do the rest, ahhh perhaps thats overkill.

 

Perhaps I should start a new thread with this one :wink:

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Concur, Hydraulic Ram!

 

I would go with a Hydraulic Ram that is hand-operated with a separate pumping unit. That way the cylinder/actuator is easily switched to a powered hydraulic pumping unit.

 

This way, you can use an electric pumping unit, or an air-powered pumping unit to lift/lower it (as well as pumping it up by hand)

 

If you choose Electric or Air, if your utilities go out, you are SOL.

 

WIth Hydraulics, you can still go by hand, or swap between any of the trhee motive forces for the pumping head (if you use actuator-only).

 

Harbor Freight has some very inexpensive 4 and 10 ton air-powered pumping units for hydraulic rams, and their 4/10 ton porta-power kits become usefull for scavenging parts when you start fabbing stuff like this.

 

Good Luck! :D

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