"Welding Tech"....When you don't have an extra hand.

Damn that's clever.

 

I will be stealing this one. Awesome tech.


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Gotta admit it does look like one, but actually it was my first attempt at making a shifter arm for my auto trans that would use an o/t floor shifter. The slot was going to allow me to fine tune the proper location on the arm for each gear selection. I had it clocked wrong on the trans. so it wound up in my stainless s**** pile. I'm not a checkbook builder so not much gets thrown away. Never know when you might find a use for it.

I'd like to say thanks to all for the positive comments.

 

Gonna be making one of these, awesome!

 

EXCELLENT TECH! My 12 yr old grandson just lost his job!lol!Only kidding theres plenty for him to do around the garage.

 

Great idea, and VERY well done, thanks for posting

 

That`s a keeper!

 

Yep, and I'm stopping by HF on the way from putting the wife and daughter on the plane to Austin Saturday so they can visit my mom in law. That little trick might save me a lot of hours and a bit of panel warpage in the next few months.

 

good idea for a tool.........

 

I see you welding from the inside; good idea. Less weld buildup on the surface that's exposed.

 

Eastwood has they have been around for years

 

last year with the "no helper" issue I cobbed up a set of vise grips with a welded attachment the would hold a piece of copper in place for my application. Didn't have any magnets and HF is an hour away but following your lead I will get one the next time I am by that store. Great tech!

 

I am on my way to Harbor Freight right now.

 

For anyone that is interested, I think this is the magnet that I used. 150 lb. pull?.........I doubt that, but it is strong.

http://www.harborfreight.com/retrieving-magnet-150-lb-pull-36904.html

This magnet appears to be made in a similar way and is cheaper. I see no reason why it couldn't be used also.

http://www.harborfreight.com/retrieving-magnet-100-lb-pull-36903.html

And this is the eastwood product. I was not aware that such a tool even existed. I would still have built it myself even if I had seen it before.

http://www.eastwood.com/review/product/list/id/2859/

I don't think finding a magnet that would be a good candidate for this tool would be that hard.....maybe a good hardware store.

 

Very Nice!

 

slick.

 

Glad I found this one. Greta idea!

 

Those can be bought cheaper through amazon.com. Still pretty pricey though. I have two versions, one for a hole, one for a seam.

 

I am going to use my HF "welder's ground magnet" with its threaded rod for this mod. very cool!

 

Good idea, many thanks for sharing.
You have my vote.

 

someplace i have seen these heavy magnets that have a lever to remove them ... it lifts the magnatized area away from the metal surface with a high centere pivot ....ez peasy to remove without damage attaching a strong magnet from moving sideways or from finished metal careful such strong magnet can dent with the unrounded corners

the magnet i mentioned could have been used to erase computer tapes being reused in the machining trade?

 

That's the way the magnet on my dial indicator base works.

 

This particular magnet that I used is fairly narrow and when you need to take it off, break it to the side and and it pulls away fairly easy. Harbor Freight rated it at 150 lbs. I think they're over rating it. Imagine that!!!!

 

That's cool,,I usually use Heyyou but after seeing this I think I can convince Heyyou to take a trip to Minnesota and visit this magical place called harbourfreight

 

I've got several heyyou's I don't think they'd work as well as this tho.

Scotty

 

Damn that one of those things you should go get patented. Great idea!

 

As a bit of a follow-up to my original tech write up, I've been working with the original design to see if I could improve it.

This particular arrangement seems to work best when welding up seams for patch panels especially in places like doors where space is limited.



When repairing this door on my F100, I used a set of the HF panel clamps which leaves a gap a little larger than I like. For me, the larger gap between the panels increases the risk of blowing a big hole when trying to weld it shut. The copper backing up the weld certainly helped eliminate burning thru.



In this photo I started to blow a hole in the original panel and after a quick check inside the door I found that I had welded just past the copper backing.



The copper was in the approximate position I show in this photo.



I also found that when placing the copper backer inside the door it gets hard to see it's placement due to the surface turning black from welding. I hit it with a DA occasionally to get a clean surface.






In this photo the cleaned copper shows up better making it easier to place it where you want it.



This setup still seems to be best for closing holes in firewalls where you've got all kinds of steps in the sheet metal to deal with.



As a side note........a friend had ask me why I didn't just figure out a way to put a magnet on the back side of the copper. Well.......I've tried that.

The strongest small magnet that I've found was rated at 30 lbs. an after building this rig I find that it is still easy to knock it loose which leads to more unmentionable language. I also understand that the magnet in the immediate vicinity of the weld for tig is a no no.







Also I don't know if the heat from welding against the magnet has any effect on it's strength. This little magnet seems to have lost some of it's strength just from what little welding I did with it.

Hopefully this information may be of some help for those of us who are challenged at welding thin sheet metal.

 

not hijackin' - just p***ing along something similar I've been using - dial indicator mag base and a piece of threaded (trophy) rod and some 1/4" copper. The indicator base has the added feature of on and off. The indicator arm has all kinds of adjustment.

 

I've used the dial indicator mag base before. My problem with it was that it took up too much space trying to set up inside a door or any confined space. In the last photos that I show of the door repair, all that I had to do was reach up inside the door and place the magnet and watch in the gap for the placement of the copper. Even though it is a fairly strong magnet....when you break it over to the side it comes right off.

I didn't take your info as hijackin.....and if I had a mag base that I could do some modifications on....that would have been what I would have used. I wasn't willing to cannibalize my base. I realize that there are a lot of ways to approach this problem. I just used what was cheapest and would do the job.