A long time ago, not quite before the dawn of man, I bought a Harbor Freight 125A flux-core welder. I never had any luck with it but today I pulled it out to have another go. The results were way better than I had anticipated.
Though I have burned through the thin sheet metal (taken from an old fridge) a few times, the beads have gone on. I really needed to put a faster wire speed. The power is set to low and though I have not made good beads, I have achieved something. As I said, the wire speed needed to be faster. The steel measures at 1mm thick so, quite thin.
Here I've welded some 2mm thick steel bracket to a 3mm thick steel bar. The bracket was found lying in the road after having been run over along with a few others. The brackets looked interesting so I'd picked them up. The 3mm steel was part of an old project on the bus that has been eliminated.
Again the wire speed is too slow but the welds have taken well. I beat that with a hammer and could not make the two come apart. On the whole, this experiment has been extremely successful. I had put the wire welder away because I just couldn't weld with it, sticking to my stick welder. I'd bought it so I could weld thin sheet metal but ended up being unable to and riveted the metal instead. Now I have another tool in my welding armory.
Today also I found my hot glue gun and hot glued the cable loom to the ceiling of the bus so the wire to the light is well supported and out of the way.
Inside the closet the wire has been tidied up with cable loom glued into place with the hot glue gun. Those things are useful! While doing all this, I realised the steel bar I welded can also be used to keep the batteries in place. Tomorrow I might get on and build a battery claping device as well as looking into putting the timer together for the light switch. There is progress, albeit slow.
Next weekend is a 4 day weekend for me and will be 60F or therabouts. Not exactly warm but the best I will get before Easter. I will head underneath to do the brake lines next weekend.
No comments:
Post a Comment