And your favorite color, too! Love the bling.
Your skills never cease to amaze me!
I also have no idea how I'm goign to mate them to the flange. I tried tacking one - see the mess in the background here - but I really don't know what amperage/tungsten etc., to work with, since obviously the tube is much thinner than the plate.
Good progress. I haven't done my SS header yet (planning on doing what you are: picking up some mandrel bent bits and assembling as you see on StainlessHeaders.com and various YouTube channels) but my guess is that you need to commit yourself to the fact you need to get some practice pieces and try various settings. Some of your welds maybe look cold and not fully penetrated - so maybe with more heat and faster speed? I'm definitely not a professional welder.
I'd be curious to hear how the flange practice goes - guessing you have a 1/4" flange you are welding to some 16g (0.065") tubing. I haven't tried to do that yet but I know there's a lot more heat than on the 16g tubing but you direct it carefully to the flange.
If I raise it much more, the welds all get 'crispy' on the inside.
Those look very nice! What sort of color did you have around the welds prior to cleanup? Do you have any pics of that, the visual helps to see what temp difference makes. The thinner rod you wanted to use would reduce the flow through to the inside, I presume.
I have no provision for back purging the welds, so it is what it is. If I were building coolant pipes such as yours I would have to have the shop do it, to make sure the welds are perfect. With headers, I don’t care so much, since they will ultimately need replacing no matter what, in my experience.
The flange is solely for locating the runners precisely for subsequent welding to the collector. This way, one can take care of the inner seams and the merge collector without things creeping out of alignment prior to insertion into the collector for the external weld, that’s what they said anyway.
Here is a picture of some welds I am doing for Bob Martin. Straight sections are stainless Steel, curved bends are mild steel.
I don't mess with the argon flow when welding. I am at less than 10 Litres per minute. No filler metal used. I also have my tungsten out a bit further than you do when I weld. On the bench I use a water cooled torch.
TonyK.
Here is a picture of some welds I am doing for Bob Martin. Straight sections are stainless Steel, curved bends are mild steel.
I don't mess with the argon flow when welding. I am at less than 10 Litres per minute. No filler metal used. I also have my tungsten out a bit further than you do when I weld. On the bench I use a water cooled torch.
TonyK.
Grimsby Ontario CanadaView attachment 17554
Nice work. Can you clarify - you don't raise the argon or amps for flange work? That's what I was referencing - the flow for the runners I left at 8-10cfm & 25 (30amps depending on whether I was revisiting a weld). I assumed there would be insufficient penetration on the flange if I left it at the 25-30amp range (and melted tungsten if insufficient flow relative to amps).
I've looked at several videos on building a water cooled unit. I did buy a head with water I/O, but it's the wrong style head for my consumables - not sure how I screwed that up...
Why do you not use any filler rod. From my reasoning, this would make a weaker joint as there are always going to be gaps in the join prior to welding. If you use base metal to fill in those gaps there is in the end less material than if there wasn't a weld seam.
Why do you not use any filler rod. From my reasoning, this would make a weaker joint as there are always going to be gaps in the join prior to welding. If you use base metal to fill in those gaps there is in the end less material than if there wasn't a weld seam.
I am doing bench work here with my water cooled torch. Depending where you are set up, just run a city cold water line to the torch and return it to drain, you don't need a rad, pump and fan set up unless you want to be mobile. I would also snub the flow of the city water down as well if I went this route.
TonyK.
Grimsby Ontario Canada.