Printed Jig Is A Welding Rig

May 13, 2020 by Kristina Panos 17 Comments

[NixieGuy] was scheming to build robots with cable-driven joints when the pandemic hit. Now that component sourcing is scarce, he’s had to get creative when it comes to continuous cables. These cables need to be as seamless as possible to avoid getting caught on the pulleys, so [Nixie] came up with a way to weld together something he already has on hand — lengths of .45mm steel cable.

The 3D printed jig is designed to be used under a digital microscope, and even clamps to the pillar with screws. Another set of screws holds the two wires in place while they are butt welded between two pieces of copper.

[Nixie] adds a spot of solder paste for good measure, and then joins the wires by attaching his bench power supply set to 20V @ 3.5A to the copper electrodes. We love that [Nixie] took the time to streamline the jig design, because it looks great.

This just goes to show you that great things can happen with limited resources and a little bit of imagination. [Nixie] not only solved his own supply chain problem, he perfected a skill at the same time. If you don’t have a bench supply, you might be able to get away with a battery-powered spot welder, depending on your application.

Getting Mixed Up With Home Stir Welding

July 3, 2015 by Kristina Panos 16 Comments

Most processes designed to join two pieces of what-have-you together are consumptive of something, whether it’s some material acting as a third party to work piece and the tool, or the tool itself. In the wonderful world of friction stir welding, the material of the two pieces under union gets swirled together through friction as the tool traverses the join path. There are, of course, professional machines that perform this with relative ease, but with a large amount of beer on the line, [skookum_choocher] was determined to make his own.

In the first video, he machines a friction welding tool by shaping a tungsten carbide button from a drill bit using a diamond grinder. Once he has a rough shoulder and protuberance going, it’s time to let her rip. Despite issues with clamping and the geometry of his tool, the weld is ultimately successful at the tail end.

Undeterred, he has another go at it after making some adjustments to the tool shoulder, changing the belt on his poor old Bridgeport, and increasing the clamping strength by a factor of four. You clamp sixteen tons, and whaddya get? A slightly better butt weld than the first time, it turns out. Fearing this weld is insufficient to win the bet, he goes for the lap weld with the work pieces stacked together in a sandwich. We prefer pizza with beer, but nevertheless congratulate him.

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