Sizod writes: “This stick welder from Campbell Hausfeld welds up to 3/8″ mild steel and uses 1/16″, 5/64″, 3/32″, and 1/8″ rod sizes. I bought a gasless wire-feed welder factory reconditioned form these guys a couple of years ago and it works great. I’m tempted to buy this one, too, at such a great price.”
Longtime reader and commenter Rick writes: “Since the bandsaw post earlier this week seems to be pretty popular, I thought this blade welder sort of goes along with it but I may deserve its own post as well. Basically, this is a cheap Chicago Electric bandsaw blade welder from Harbor Freight. It requires 220V power. But the hot item IMHO, is this 12v car battery powered model [photo after the jump]. Basically it does the same job in a smaller package. Granted, it retails for $50 more than the 220V one, but for those — like many of us – who don’t have 220V in our garages or workshops, this could be a godsend.”
“Breaking and rewelding a blade is sometimes necessary if you’ve got to make an internal cut into something that requires you to thread the blade through, make the cut, and then brake the blade and thread it out. In that sense, I think the smaller battery powered welder might be better as it’s easier to hold by hand, etc. without dragging everything over to the welder like the Harbor Freight model.
“Blade welders overall, though, are a useful tool if you want an easier way of welding a blade (assuming you have a regular welder), or just a way of getting it done, period, if you don’t.”
I’m pretty positive that this would be lousy for the use in the picture above — I’d never trust my car’s finish to it — but I picked one up anyway when I found it on sale for $10. (The standard price is still only $20.) It’s actually quite handy around the shop, more for grinding than welding.
Blake submitted this awesome, self-explanatory tool. It’s a welding helmet. Shaped like a skull. With flames.
I don’t care who you are — that’s cool.
If you operate a larger welding shop, you probably grind your own tungsten electrodes. And, if you happen to own a Sharpshooter or Turbo-4 electrode grinder, Diamond Ground Products would like to give you a free grinding wheel to encourage you to try their product line.
Think you’re space-limited in your 10′ x 6′ “in front of the cars” garage/metal shop? In a laboratory in Switzerland they’re working in a space measured in nanometers — that’s billionths of an inch. From NewScientistTech.com:
One technique, called “nanorobotic” spot welding, uses molten copper to join up objects in the same way that a human electrician might use solder. It was developed by Brad Nelson, Lixin Dong and Li Zhang at the Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems, Zurich, Switzerland and colleagues Xinyong Tao and XIabin Zhang at Zhejiang University, China.
“We position a 50-nanometre-wide carbon nanotube filled with copper inside a nanorobotic manipulator, and run a small voltage through it to melt the copper,” explains Dong. In experiments the researchers positioned the manipulator so the melting metal connected one carbon nanotube to another.
As promised. The one on the left in the picture above is a knot cup brush while the one on the right is a standard wire brush. As you can see, the wires in the knot cup version are wound together into bundles. This helps a) keep the wires in the brush, and b) helps to assure that if they do come off the brush, they’re not straight, sharp wires.
The one pictured is from Northern Tool and clocks in at $12. There are plenty of others on the market, too.
Knot Cup Brush [Northern Tool]
Street Pricing [Froogle]
When it comes to welding helmet decorations, we live by a simple credo: flames = good. So when we heard about Hobart’s XTV-series auto-darkening helmets, our first question was, “Do they come in flames?”
Yes. Yes, they do.
How often have you wished you could pick up your MIG welder and carry it over to a friend’s place? Or to a job site? Sure, there are lots of “portable” rigs you could use — but they never really live up to the quality of your unit at home.
Try this on: The Millermatic Passport is completely self-contained and requires only power for full-on MIG welding. It holds 12 oz of CO2 and an 8″ spool of wire internally — all in a suitcase-sized package that weighs in around 55 lbs completely ready-to-weld. Read past the jump for a diagram of what’s going on inside the little blue box.
Most starter MIG rigs offer tapped voltage settings instead of continuous adjustment, both because it’s less expensive and because it simplifies things for beginner and intermediate welders. But while most units offer a five-tap system, Hobart’s new Handler 187 has seven settings, which gives you better control.
Hobart also says the 187’s improved inductor keeps a tighter reign on amperage, which in turn “smoothes out the arc” and improves metal flow.
As long as we’re passing along cool online projects today, we thought we’d share another fun fund: Miller Electric’s “Dream It. Weld It” lists a number of cool projects with step-by-step instructions. Most of the projects are quite practical, including make-it-yourself tools like a bending brake, a portable weld table, and air tool storage rack, and a trailer dolly.
We’re really starting to see an upturn in the number of press releases piling up in our mailbox… It must be the holiday season! While you’re digging out the Christmas lights — why wait ’till Thanksgiving? — Lincoln’s been cooking up a new inexpensive MIG welder to keep you busy through spring: the Power MIG 140C.
The 140C’s designed to run on common 120V household current and can operate either as a true MIG unit with gas or as a flux-core rig, so it’s a good match for your garage shop. But it also offers some high-end features such as a cast aluminum drive and continuous voltage control. And in case you’d like to try your hand welding some aluminum, Lincoln’s offering an optional Magnum 100SG spool gun made specifically for the Power MIG line.
We’re seeing some gas-ready packages starting at around $600 online. Ho, ho, ho.
Street Pricing [Froogle]
You should own a set of pipe clamps. Sure, they’re not usually the first clamps you reach for — especially if you’ve got a few of the new trigger clamps around the shop. But when you finally end up needing to clamp something really big together, you’ll wish you had pipe clamps.
And kudos to Irwin for their clutch system that lets you use these clamps with whatever 1/2″ or 3/4″ pipe you happen to have lying around — no threading required!
This isn’t a tool per se, but it will help you use the ones you already have. If you haven’t wandered over to the Miller Welding website recently, you might not have found their great “welding library.” It’s a compendium of tips ranging from the obvious buyer’s guide to some incredibly useful descriptions of techniques.
For the professional welder, they also discuss some of the economic issues involved, including how to keep your costs down and make the most of the tools you’ve got.
If nothing else, this site is worth a bookmark solely for their “Welding Dictionary,” which serves as a great reference when you’re reading other texts. Best of all: It’s free.
Welding Library [Miller]
Back when we originally wrote about them, we promised to check in with Hobart and let you know where you can find these great gloves. Well, we’re a bit late in doing so, but here ’tis:
You can buy these gloves at most farm supply stores, such as Northern Tool and Tractor Supply, as well as through a variety of other retailers. We didn’t see them listed online, but Hobart assures us that they carry them. If you aboslutely, positively can’t find them locally, try giving Hobart a call at 1-800-626-9420 (their customer service line) for help locating them.
It’s rare that we really gush about a product, but this is going to be one of those times. We’ll probably be embarassed about it in the morning, but tonight we’re gonna unabashedly tell you: these gloves rock the house. They’re easily the most comfortable and useful welding gloves we’ve ever used. We think our name (in the post title) is better, but Hobart calls them their “Premium Form-Fitted Welding Gloves.”
A while back we reviewed Industrial Press’ great book Welding Essentials: Questions and Answers. The focus of today’s review, Welding Fabrication and Repair: Questions and Answers is essentially a “sequel” to that book, covering more fabrication techniques than welding processes. There’s some overlap between the two books, but not much.
Fabrication and Repair picks up where Welding Essentials left off, beginning with an overview of the most common fabrication hand tools and their applications, including various measuring tools, power tools, clamps, pliers, and jigs. This will be handy for anyone who’s just getting started, though even seasoned pros may have seen others using a tool and wondered what it was and how it works. From there the book moves on to common materials and finishes, some of which we’ve seen and used and some that we haven’t. For example, a huge section on pipe and tubing explains how sizing works, common practices, and many, many ideas on how to create joints as needed.
Fabrication and Repair’s “basic building blocks” chapter truly shines with explanations of many common techniques, such as how to miter or notch material for rectangular frames. As an example of how intuitive this book can be, it not only offers a wide variety of suggestions in terms of steps you can follow to improve the chances of a frame being welded square, it explains (with pictures!) how to use adjustable wrenches to bend the frame back into square if you have trouble.
Later chapters also cover all kinds of practical design and repair techniques such as: how to layout part cuts to waste the least material, how to use your welder to remove a frozen bolt, and even how to build a small stand for your handheld torch.
It’s hard to explain in a short post how incredibly valuable this book can be as a reference. Since we’ve had one around the shop we’ve picked it up to reference fastener types, to find an easy method to weld wire mesh to a frame, to determine how to weld up a cracked beam, and to figure out the strongest design for a horizontal bracket.
Trust us: If you’re fabricating — either professionally or just for fun in your home shop — this is a book that should grace your shelf. We found it available from a variety of sources starting at around $30.
Marlow, Frank. Welding Fabrication & Repair: Questions and Answers. New York, NY: Industrial Press, Inc., 2002. ISBN: 0-8311-3155-1
Street Pricing [Froogle]
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