MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
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Seem to be 2 schools of thought on this.
1 buy a MIG welder, aquire loads of scrap box section 16swg steel and get practicing. Mount test pices firmly on the floor and hit with a sledge hammer. If the metal snaps before the weld does then you can call yourself a welder, else repeat and try again.
2 Go on a course, repeat ad-infinium untill youve paid for so many couses you should have just gone to uni and done a 2nd degree instead, slaughter a virgin goat at stonehenge to the gods of metalwork and still people will tut as your qualifications don't mean anything and you should have just gone for option 1.
I have no desire to take up welding as a career, I just ant to build a LOCOST! The book implies the chassis is relatively straightforeward and anyone could do it. But the wishbones should be handed over to someone else as theyre not quite as straightforeward and a bit more safety critical.
If you want to build a LOCOST for yourself, then on a 'on your head be it' basis - take option 1
If you were going to build one for someone else take option 2
Your local college will do a course - great fun.
The closest I fond was c.a. 50miles away and wanted £800 for 1 night a week for 6 months! And that only went upto 'level 1' which from the prospectus implied was little more than an entry level to a more expensive course and wouldnt actualy have me at a stage that I could think about actualy doing any welding?
I'm not saying weldings easy, but there are uni courses with less contact time in a year!
16swg is a piece of cake to weld with MIG, just practice and get your settings right. Googling mig tutorials will take you to a site (can't remember it off the top of my head) that has heaps of videos explaining techniques, settings etc.
Lay a heap of welds and hacksaw through them all tooking at penetration and any holes/bubbles and generally it'll be fine. Learn about the problems of warping when welding long lengths. Get somewhere with no drafts to whip the shield gas away.
Currently welding up my old car sills, 0.7mm steel (measured with paint) with 0.7mm wire and a 35A min weld current outside a garage - great fun.
I did a course which helped me understand what I was looking for, then I went back to my cheap DIY machine and spent several hours practice trying to replicate it at home before I was happy I'd trust my life with it. And even so I don't like to think TOO hard about it!
I'm not saying weldings easy, but there are uni courses with less contact time in a year!
Not real uni courses. Surf Science degrees maybe! (I had 28 hours contact/lecture time per week for the record!)
If you want to build a LOCOST for yourself, then on a 'on your head be it' basis - take option 1If you were going to build one for someone else take option 2
Scenario 1, with a view to selling ~1 year after getting it through IVA, then maybe starting on something more individual, I'm thinking allong the lines of the Vanwall (sp?).
I did a short one term evening course. Not a C&G but enough to get you started and gain some important tips to get good enough results for my needs. We did gas mig and brazing mainly gas and mig.
don't buy a cheap mig set if you want decent welds. Also Argon makes a difference over CO2 IME, but probably less so if you're a welding god.
Probably the primary tip I'd give you is preparation. CLEAN everything to a shining finish. SHAPE every joint so there are no gaps. Or you'll start blowing holes everywhere and ending up with really poor welds.
If you don't have a welder yet consider a TIG unit, will be far higher quality pound for pound than a MIG and will produce much better welds.
Do as the instructions suggest then - weld the chassis yourself, leave the wishbones to someone else, that someone else will charge you less that than £800 and 2500 miles of petrol.
It'll take you a long time to learn not a lot on an evening course. All the info on set up and kit is there on the net so that'll get you started. Just give it a go and get practicing.
wow! That's expensive!
I taught myself with MIG. I built a subframe fora bike that didn't break - just built it up from scrap making sure I had loads of metal. So I think option 1) is fine. What I found difficult was getting neat welds - getting the strength was fine or appeared to be
If you don't have a welder yet consider a TIG unit, will be far higher quality pound for pound than a MIG and will produce much better welds.
That's an interesting point, if you choose to use a TIG with CO2? Otherwise Argon bottles are bloody expensive to waste while learning. Also means feeding wire manually rather than auto, which some people seem to find very tricky. By far my favourite is gas welding but its about the most expensive I can think of! After that is TIG, but the kit (including bottle rental) is so bloody pricey I just can't justify it when MIG will produce perfectly servicable welds for half the price and a quarter of the running costs.
TIG's mentioned in the book as a option, but only for neatness over the seagull splatter look of MIG welds.
My understanding was:
Gas - kaboom potential, kit can be used for more than just welding though/
ARC - PITA to learn, PITA to use, super cheep though.
MIG - easiest to learn and use
Tig - like MIG but slightly harder and not wuite as cheep, looks good though.
Easiest option would be get a MIG, prep the steel, tack it all up then take it to a welder to finish.
That way you are cutting down on loads of labour time/cost and you are getting tidy/strong/safe job.
Ah the TIG versus MIG debate. It's all about quality innit 🙂 Can't see many people on here buying a bike thats been MIGged though !
Easiest way would be to buy the chassis pre built for £450, or even just buy a Cateram/RobinHood/Westfield/Dax/Sylva kit.
The dream/plan is to build a car, I intend to do everything I can reasnobly do, myself.
From what I've read, MIG is just as strong as TIG, couldn't give a monkeys about how it looks as long as it doesnt kill me!
MIG and TIG can produce welds of equal strength, MIG machines have more moving parts which will give you a hard time, however when properly set up and running well they can lay down alot of weld in a short time.
Learning to lay down a simple fillet weld with a mig welder is easy. The difficulty comes when you need to position weld.
Try doing overhead welds in cramped conditions and see how many times you get burnt. 🙂 Then there's spot welding, again easy to lean the technique but to master takes a lot of practice. Vertical welding is even harder still. It can be good fun learning though. 🙂
My first welding test as an apprentice was an asmi 9 pipe but on a 45 degree angle that was set up UNDER my bench that I had to weld in position. Never liked mig, doesn't seem to penetrate the joint like tig or stick do.
From what I've read, MIG is just as strong as TIG, couldn't give a monkeys about how it looks as long as it doesnt kill me!
Any good weld will be 98% strength of the perent metal whatever the process is.
Any monkey can learn to MIG/MAG weld but it takes years to TIG/TAG proficiently.
And ASMI 9? Where did you serve your time ? Getting coded to an american standard and not something like BS EN 29something?
learning to weld is easy getting good take lots of practice.
see if you can find someone to give you some pointers. then practice lots.
have you looked for online guides?