Last night I finished up the mounts for the leveling feet of the utility benches I’m making. Of every thing that needed to be done, the mounts where the one thing I was concerned about. Somehow I needed to figure out how to weld the two pieces together, without imparting a lot of distortion in the final part. After reading a bunch of posts on Welding Web, and asking a few question I determined that the best way to do this was by pre-heating the two pieces before welding them together. I used a cheap propane torch to preheat them to over 500°F. I’ll let the pictures do the talking, but I think it worked because the beads are nice and fluid looking.
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The magnets I ordered of eBay arrived yesterday, so this morning I finished up the chip shield. The Neodymium magnets are stronger that I expected, so I decided to use two instead of four. They provide enough holding force, that you need to have a firm grip on the knob to move the shield.
Hopefully this set-up with minimize the number of hot chips launched my way, while still providing an unobstructed view of the cutter.
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I was cutting some aluminum to size lat night for my chip shield project, and was amazed at the surface finish I achieved.
The details:
- 7075-T6 1.5″ x 2.5″
- Jet 5×6 horizontal bandsaw
- 10-14 TPI variable pitch bi-metal blade
- 120 SFPM
- no cutting fluid
612×816 456kB
1224×1632 1217kB
I’ve decided it’s time to make some kind of chip shield, so I don’t get burned by flying chips anymore. My self imposed design requirements are as follows:
- cheap
- easy to install/remove
- simple to build
The following renderings show what I came up with.
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I painfully learned the lesson(again) tonight that blue chips are hot! I was turning down some 8620 to make threaded inserts, and a 2″ long helix flew up over my head, and landed on the back of my neck. After a quick “hot hot” dance, and a bandage I was back to making chips. Five minutes later I took a 9 to the chin that left a nice little mark.
So remember everyone, if you’re making chips that look like this, don’t let them land on bare skin.
