Ignoramus14558 wrote:
On 2008-07-22, Curt Welch wrote:

Now I've added a mill and lathe to my "must have some day soon" list.
Metal working is such fun. Like welding, I don't know why I waited
until so late in life to start learning it!


I feel the same about metalworking. Nice good looking dice. If you had
a aluminum capable welder, you may have been able to weld outsides and
then mill flush, to make the welds invisible!

I could easily have used the equipment in the welding lab to weld it into a
cube but I wanted it to be purely a milling project so I opted not to do
that. I actually like the seams and cap screws!

Here's a 2" dice I made as a welding project. This was done with
oxy-acetylene The dots are brazed. It's made out of 18 gauge steel. The
holes were drilled, then I welded backing plates to each piece and then
filled the holes by brazing. Grinding off the excess got it back to the
nice round circle shapes for the dots. (no seams or screews

http://newsreader.com/dice.jpg

On the same line of projects, I made a 4" cube out of 3/8" steel with only
stick welding. It was done with 7018 rods.

http://newsreader.com/cube.jpg

At a bit over 5 lbs in weight it makes for a serious paper weight.

I also made a 2" cube out of 18 gauge steel with Tig. Don't seem to have a
picture of that online. TIG was by far the easiest for me.

Welding a cube is an interesting project because the errors of alignment
and distortion tend to add up showing off your mistakes. Welding shut a
sealed container is also an interesting task as the hot air tends to want
to expand and blow out your weld pool. Nice little projects for testing
your skills as a welder and you end up with something fun for you desk in
the end.

For the oxy-acetylene class I also made this more complex art-like
project....

http://newsreader.com/rosebee.jpg

--
Curt Welch http://CurtWelch.Com/
http://NewsReader.Com/