What You've Welded Recently With Your Everlast Unit

[christian]

Well,

I don't think I've seen this kind of thread here, so I'll begin with a very modest bit of TIG welding I've done today, in joining a cable mount arm to a two-piece collar for an eBike project I'm doing at a slow pace. I'll probably do a bit more welding on the project today, but it's down to the smaller details now.

I'm not sure how well the forum is posting pictures at the moment, so this initial post may or my not show the simple bead, which is about an inch long. Nothing sensational, just an effort to get the proverbial party started!

[christian]

Here's a little more today on the electric motor mount. TIG welded a few beads with bar strap for the mount, with two halves around the 1-1/2" tubing in a kind of saddle fashion for with a tab for a hole and a bolt. Nothing fancy. My Argon tank is getting down to around 300 psi, and I'm just starting to get some traces of porosity. But I think I can get a few more beads out of it. Ha, ha, ha...

[christian]

Here's a couple more pics.

Most of it was cutting and grinding for the fabrication and fit-up of an aluminum, diamond plate chain guard.

But I did get the main part tacked onto the two aluminum fastening collars. My Argon tank is almost empty anyway, so i decided to quit there.

[oleblu72]

What are you making Christian a ebike trike?

Mark

[christian]

Here's a bit more on that aluminum chain guard fabbin'.

I believe these aluminum collars are a cast variety, not billet.

Welding the first one wasn't as easy as the second, which I was able to do in a single pass. Nothing too pretty, but better than the first collar.

With the first one I tended to burn-in a coating of filler onto the collar before joining it to the sheet diamond plate, in an effort to kind of insulate the final puddle from the impurities in the cast. That made for a wider bead, though. And I like them narrower, even on a fillet, if possible.

On the second collar I turned up the Argon and AC balance a bit, then just ignored any peppering I saw coming out of the cast portion and just crammed the filler in the puddle, which seemed to make the puddle clean up well enough.

[christian]

Well,

I did a good bit more on the aluminum, diamond plate chain guard.

Mostly just fit-up and tack-up, which seemed to take me half the day. Lots of OK tacks, but then using a flap disc and orbital sander to reduce the tendency for irregularities in the welding beads for the two outside corner joints.





But I decided not to rush into the final welding, and to wait for some ambient indoor daylight tomorrow. I plan to flap disc the final beads down anyway, to better match the brushed metal finish that I like, regardless of how nice (or poor looking) the beaded seams turn out. But I still like to have fairly ideal conditions with aluminum TIG, since I'm really still a novice at it. I mean, I've had my 210EXT for nearly 3-1/2 years, but my actual time on it with aluminum projects and practice is still only about 8 or 9 hours of actual welding. Of course, with DC TIG, a lot more. But I'm often looking for stuff I can weld using aluminum, and especially diamond plate aluminum, as I've been a long-time a fan of diamond plate and expanded metal in ferrous metals.

Anyway, I'll undoubtedly post a pic of the final outcome on this portion of the project.

[christian]

Yeah, Mark, it'll be an eTrike. Not for me, though. But I think I'll keep as a staging platform or a demo of some sort. I took the basic, cheap, old adult trike in exchange for some labor I did in refurbishing a vintage porch glider for an elderly neighbor. Her trike-riding days were over. She got the trike for free and I didn't want to take any money from her. I was initially just going to add the 5-speed internal hub to the drive train and sell it off at a garage sale, but it kept spinning off into a greater project somehow. Silly me. But it's fun too.

Anyway, here’s the chain guard with the welding done. Single pass on both seams. I used Squarewave, even though I’ve sometime used Triangle wave to be extra safe in preventing overheating and metal dropping out. It did start to keyhole-out a little at the end of each seam, but it wasn’t a problem.



The top view shows the middle strip having a non-diagonal patten in the diamond plate, since I only had enough metal to make that strip in one piece with the non-diagonal patten. was a little hesitant about that, and considered stitching two strips up to keep the diagonal pattern, but then decided to make it easier on myself and just call it a “design feature” in its pattern deviation.



The inside view isn’t remarkable, except that it was a tight tolerance between the chainring and the base of the crank arms. And even though I seemed to hit it spot on, at about one inch, I still might grind off the back side of that one crank arm to give some spare clearance. Also, I installed a bottom bracket wheel that accepts a eccentric-arranged bearing cassette, so the chainring and crank spindle is able to be adjusted for tightening the chain, and that made for a bit of an extra challenge in leaving enough room in the chain guard for the chainring to be moved around in a cam-like fashion. But I mostly allotted only for rotation in the lower half, i.e., full tightening and loosening can be done on either half of the circumference, or both. This is the first time I’ve used one of these eccentric arrangements, and I like the idea for their chain tightening ability, also since they don’t have threads in the bottom bracket shell, which makes them easier to weld on.



Here’s the finished guard, installed with the beads smoothed off with a flap disc and given a brushed finish, which I like better than even the good looking TIG beads on the more decorative stuff. I mean, TIG, MIG or Stick beads and seams remind me of Frankenstein, so to speak. Of course, on structural stuff or welded tanks, better to have more metal deposition and seam integrity. But this was a somewhat esthetic portion of the project, so I allowed for a some excessive metal finishing.