home made tools and equipment...

That would be for that guy we learned about in shop class, Primitive Pete.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'd do that in a heartbeat. But, you're working for less than $15/hr.

 

Plastic handle on facebook $30.
2 hours in the shop deducing a project, repurposing scrap steel, playing with tools.....priceless

 

Using the side mounted handle that came with the grinder when purchased: Sensible thing to do

 

I think the handle on top is more about ease of control in tight spaces.

 

ArborPress Bender:
upper is made to fit press bar, will bend nice 90s in strap steel

 

Same idea,,mine are just a little bigger

 

Like the Rock Auto magnet, I have those damn things everywhere!

 

Was over at a friends the other day...he was jacking up the front of his roadster when it slipped off the jack, which in turn, crushed the bottom of his grill shell and bent the***** outta the grill...when I got home made this simple jack alteration

My jack has a removable pad, so I took a short piece of 1.5" c-channel I had lying around and made it fit my jack....my beam axle (Superbell) sits nicely inside and will not allow the jack to slide out...takes about 30 secs to switch it from pad to channel and back....simple but works really well

 

^ Great idea! I'm going to make up a couple of these right now.

 

Just finished the stand for my shrinker/stretcher.

 

Home made TIG cooler

Need to do some Ali welding on a thick transmission casting, so any of my Gas cooled torches would not be any good for a big fillet weld. Bought a WP18 Water cooled TIG torch for a reasonable price, but was a bit shocked at the cost of a TIG cooler. So.....


Started off with this NOS oil cooler picked up at a swapmeet and mounted it on what will be the back panel of the cooler.

Then added a pair of fans scavenged from computer file servers



Fabbed this tank from some scrap Stainless sheet that came from a mate. Welding wasn't good to look at on the first pass; once I'd rewelded the pinholed areas after pressure testing it @ 10PSI the welding looks quite horrible. I turned that Brass boss in my lathe for the (swapmeet again) coolant temperature guage.



here's the casing with the pump. This is a 12V pump intended to provide domestic water in a motorhome or such. Will run up to 80PSI and can push 6 litres a minute -although obviously not both at the same time. The power supply running the pump is an ATX, the standard item in IBM clone PCs for many years.



Here's the cooler plumbed up; there is a flow sensor in there which will sound an alarm if the flow stops. The flow sensor came from a dead washing machine, the horn came from my daughter's first bicycle.



This is the cooler after testing it with my WP 18 torch. There is really good flow through the torch; the head end pressure (the bottom gauge) is 30 PSI. No excuse not to get on with the welding job now....

 

Stueeee, thanks for sharing! I was thinking about something like this recently for the same reasons!

 

Pardon my ignorance about this subject but what does it cool and why is it needed?

 

If I'm not mistaken, the TIG torch. High current welding brings a lot of heat to everything around it, you want the heat in the metal you are welding and not in the torch you are holding.

 

As G-son says, the coolant is pumped round the torch head to stop it overheating/burning out during high current welding. The coolant is delivered through the torch power lead -the actual conductor is the metal braid around the hose; this allows a smaller cross section power lead which goes some way to compensate for the weight of the coolant on its way to/from the torch. The red and blue (Rectus 21) fittings on the front are where the torch coolant go and return connect up.

The WP18 water cooled torch is the same physical size and uses the same accessories as the largest gas cooled torch (WP26) but has double the current capacity at around 350A. There is a whole range of smaller water cooled torches, which are all much more compact than an equivalent gas cooled torch.

 

I don’t have your talent nor the ambition to build a cooler from scratch. I have a pallet queen!

Not home made but I did earn the cash to buy it at home! My new Miller Dynasty 210DX with CPS and cooler. My only excuse now will be laziness!

 

The hard part, paying for it, is done.

That TIG cooler is awesome!

 

I have tried TIG welding and I can say paying for the welder is not the hard part

 

I see I missed the welding table discussion a couple pages back. I made this table last winter starting with a 2" thick piece of odd shaped steel for the top. I was originally going to drill the top for attachments, but when I found out that was no fun, I made a 3" angle frame around it and drilled the holes there. Comes complete with the vice grip rack and mud dauber guard, even though we don't have mud daubers up here. Probably weighs in somewhere north of 700 lbs so I used heavy duty castors on one end and a floor jack tab for the other end. Stays put when I'm working. Has a heavy duty vice and a post vice and an extendable end.

 

Got a black with red racing stripe theme going on so the table had to match... that's soffit metal painted red for the shelves and I've got a couple upright attachments for the upright recievers.

 

Here is a Bead Roller I just finished. I wanted one with clearance for longer stuff and had most of the parts laying around from different other stuff. Some of it I had to buy new though. My recommendation to anyone wanting to build something similar is ........Don't. It was waaaayyyy more work than I expected. Probably a lot better to just modify an existing cheapo, or use box tubing and put the shafts on the outside of the box tubing. I like it now that its done, but wouldn't do it again.

 

Go Big or Go Home! Right?

 

Damn that's nice.

 

Pretty simple, very mechanical and something I always wanted but didn't want to buy. So I built one. It was lots of fun, only lost a small amount of blood, just the bad stuff that didn't like me anyway and a few burns.

Made it from 3/4 inch steel tube 1/8 wall and some 1/4 flat steel for the base and the tabs and a random spring I found in the garage.

I used my cheap off-shore mini lathe to make three different tips for it. The white one is delrin, the other two are mild steel.

 

^^^Nice job, But I'm sorry...what is it and what does it do? I have no idea. I may need to make one though. Lol
Andy

 

looks like a dent removing tool to me??

 

Whacked out this bead roller frame. I used the July, '94 American Rodder article as a muse and altered dimensions to work with my offshore cheapy guts. Works damn near as good as my old Pexto which I dearly miss. All shafts are brass bushed and run just right.

 

Looks like a Bullseye pick to me, nicely done too!