Welding Final

Welding Final 271 Fabrication 1

Kyle Sisk

        My initial Idea for my final project was to fabricate a metal grill for my truck.  I have some damage on the front fender so I thought it would help.  After talking with my instructor I realized that this may be a project that is a bit over my head.  Since all I have been doing is groove and fillet welds something like a table would be in my range.  With this in mind I thought the next best thing would be to make a table that also had a quench tank for the tool room.  Whenever I would cut out coupons to use in the bend test, they were always very hot from grinding but there was no quench table close by.  

        After getting the green light I began cutting out my pieces, starting with the 2x2 steel square tubing.  I only needed 2 20’ tubes to complete the project.  After getting a refresher on the saw I started cutting.  It wasn’t until after all the pieces were cut and I went to tack them together when I realized that all the cuts were not square.  This was my first mistake of the project.  What I think happened was that I did not prop up the tubes when I was cutting so when the saw would be 80% done cutting the tube, gravity was pulling on the metal causing each and every cut to be off.  After spending the rest of the day re cutting the tubes everything was perfectly square and ready to head to the next step.  

        I then went to cut out my table top out but there was just enough to not be able to cut out the 46x23 piece that I needed, so I had to change my dimensions to 44x23.  Luckily I only needed to take off an inch from both sides so the frame is still centered on the table.  I also had to wait until the next day to cut out my table on the track burner because the only one that can make cuts up to 44 inches was being used.  

        The next step was cutting out my caster plates.  The cutting out was the easy part.  The hard part was figuring out exactly where the holes would need to be drilled since we did not have any extra casters in the shop.  I then proceeded to take the casters off of another table and using those to guide me.  I used a contact scribe to place the hole then used the hole puncher to make a clean punch. Bolting on the casters is the only thing I Was unable to do on the project.  

        As I started tacking together the frame I let there be a 1/16” gap between the tube metal to insure penetration.  For this specific project I was trying to decide between Dual Shield or MIG.  I have more experience in the Dual Shield process but I also got an A on all of my MIG classes.  IT ultimately came down to cleanliness.  I wanted to have the most control with MIG and also have no slag to clean up and chip away.    For this frame I used the Lincoln Electric Power MIG 210 MP.  I was running it at 18 volts and the wire was set at 310.  With these settings I was able to complete all around fillet welds.  The filler metal used was .50 The welds were not too difficult considering that they were all 2 inch fillet welds.  Once I had all the welds completed I was taught a trick to take a few steps away from the frame and line up your eyesight with the longitudinal pieces to see if they are 100% perpendicular.  As I did this, I saw that it was not exactly on, but maybe an 1/8” of an inch off on one side.