That’s really cool, great work! If you want to do something with that plate on the handle, here’s a tutorial for making those etched, ink-fill name plates you used to see on all sorts of old machinery:
Don’t worry, you don’t need serious machine tools for most of those operations, you can do them by hand easy enough. And if you don’t want to go that far, or want an intermediate step, you can always do an ink-fill over deeper and wider embossed letters, with a crayon rub and then baking it in the oven for a few minutes.
It’s always fascinating to watch the process of building something I’d never even thought about how to build. Brilliant idea using the spinning axle from the Diablo, too, I appreciate a good bit of re-purposing.
Tried bronze casting and smelting this weekend and made myself a fancy belt ornament and a knife. I think I’ll wear that bronze wheel on my hip as a regular thing.
I’m kinda shy to share it because I’m a huge noob when it comes to making things. But a while back we had a microwave fail on us so I got the urge to take it apart and see how it worked before we tossed it and I ended up cannibalizing a few motors and the step up transformer. Then I learned you could make lichtenburg figures with them so I made a maker of those things using it.
Then I decided because it’s like instant death for anyone who touches it I should like put it into a box and properly ground everything and that’s what I’m making.
(cutting wood evenly is hard it turns out)
I’ll get a picture of the project in it’s current state when the workshop is less of a mess. I guess I’m self conscious about it.
Don’t be! It’s not like I was born knowing the arcane magicks of speeds and feeds, everybody learns somewhere, sometime. Just the other day, I learned that you need a seriously hardcore iron to desolder things off an aluminum-Printed PCB, because it transfers the heat away faster than most regular irons can dump it in. Literally never even thought about it before, but hey, learn something new every day. Never be embarrassed to share what you make.
(I also managed to eat a chocolate that I’d accidentally grabbed with a hand soaked in acetone and thermal paste. Can confirm this kills the chocolate.)
Yeah, everyone is always learning this stuff. Everytime I get the hang of a new skill the feeling of being good at something fades pretty quickly and I’m back to feeling like a noob. Here’s my pile of garbage built around a microwave transformer:
I have a question, what exactly is a spot welder and how does it differ from my MIG welder? Does it just heat like crazy wires you touch together until they melt? and any metal you’ve put between them?
Basically yes, if you replace the secondary winding in a microwave transformer with 1-2 loops of a super thick wire you can get lots of amps and very low volts. The resistance through the material soaks up most of that and turns it into heat. I’m not adding any material to the part or anything. I mostly use it for battery tabs, which only need a fraction of a second of power applied, so heat in the rest of the system isn’t really an issue. I’ve only recently started to learn some about metal working, much more comfortable with the electronics part. There’s some really nice builds on hackaday if you’re curious.
An arduino controls the big relay in the back, timing is set with a pot on the front, and there’s a switch for a double pulse because that tends to give better welds.
Theory is similar - heating metal until it’s near liquid to join it together - but the method and application is different.
Spot welder, as old mate there says, dumps low volts and high amps to heat materiel in a small spot, so that it melts together, and makes a small but strong bond, usually pending another way to join it together. Same application as doing a quick tack weld with any other welder, but generally, you’ll only use it on sheetmetal. Doesn’t really work for anything much thicker.
Your MIG, like I said, same principle of high amps low volts, but it doesn’t bond the two parts by itself, it bonds by heating the parts to be joined, and introducing filler materiel, and using that to form a stronger bond, plus using a gas flow to shield the bond from any oxygen, and therefore, oxidization.
That’s a nice looking bit of furniture! I love the offset center supports, looks cool, and the darker middle section looks great with the powder blue sides.
Not exactly making things, but a new tool - I picked up an ultrasonic cleaner the other day, and honestly, I have no idea why I didn’t buy one sooner. Strong recommendation for basically any home shop, it cleans like a hot damn. My test peice right after I bought it was an old, rusted bolt I gave a light wire brushing to knock the biggest crap off. Dropped it in the machine, hit the button, and it practically exploded into a cloud of old rust, and after about ten minutes, it came out with ZERO rust, practically looking like new. And that’s just with water, you can also run them with solvents and various other stuff depending on the cleaning job.
Second test, and old pair of little pliers that I was going to throw out, because they were rusted solid shut, and I couldn’t get in to clean the rust, and open them up. Threw them in, ten minutes, they were practically rust free, and moved smooth as butter.
Seriously, get an Ultrasonic cleaner. You don’t need a big fancy one, you can get the job done perfectly well with just a small, $30-ish dollar jewellery cleaner, provided the bath isn’t TOO small.
I’ve been thinking about one for a while. Only the stuff I tend to want to clean are sometimes larger parts so now I’m looking at a $200 10L unit on Amazon.
Well, might have to start with a tiny harbor fraught unit for small stuff.
It’s worth it. I bought a tiny little cheapy just to see how it went, and I just threw some old, rusted bolt-drivers through to get some comparison photos.
Here’s how they went in(After a quick rinse to get rid of dust):
Propably pretty well, if you can fit them in the bath. You can help it along with some appropriate chemicals in the bath - The above was just water, but you can use other stuff. They even make cleaning agents specifically for use in Ultrasonic baths, for getting rid of rust off stuff.
They’re zombie minis from Zombicide: Black Plague. Unfortunately I screwed up the primer on the female figure, which is why she basically doesn’t have a face. the rest came out pretty well. Still need to paint the baseplates.
