More Powder Coating!!!!!!!!
Well it's a new year so what do you say, let's start the year off right with some powder coating projects?
A few years back I purchased a
Miller DialArc HF welder for use out in the barn.
It's a terrific piece of equipment, definitely heavy duty.
One of the first things I did was reroute some of the electrical and cooling lines out of the bottom of the welder. That would prevent them from interfering with the welder's steerable front wheels. Also any lines that might chafe were reinforced with appropriate automotive heater or fuel hose and everything zip tied together for security when the welder is moved around.
When I'm TIG welding, I needed a different way to cool the torch tip other than the way it was set up when I bought it. The 2 green hoses, seen coiled on top in the second picture above, relied on a constant running water source for intake, cooling water and the other hose carried warm/hot water away from the torch and was just emptied into a floor drain.
That was fine if you had a water source which I don't in the barn. The solution was to buy a self-contained cooling system. This is what I'm using:
http://weldingsupplies.dynaflux.com/item/water-recirculators/tig-torch-cooling-system/item-1270
It's a
Dynaflux Tig-er-*** welding cooler. It's stainless steel, all self-contained and sheds about 10,000 BTU's of heat. For the type of welding I do it's more than adequate.
I wanted a place to mount the cooler on the welder rather than just have it sit directly on the back of the machine. I also needed a place to store all the various electrical power lines and cooling hoses.
In collaboration with a friend, this is what I came up with. (Note it's sitting on the Portable Dirty Room welding bench that I relocated to the barn)
That's a drip tray on the left which is where the cooler will sit to catch drips when the coolant is resupplied from time to time. There are 2 mounting points on the 4 corners to attach the rig to the welder with 3/8" bolts.
A shallow parts tray was also made...
... which sits on top of the welder, in front. That's handy for holding welding rod, torch tips etc. and storing the foot control when it's not in use.
The 4 torch holders were made from eye bolts that were cut to length.
A hold was drilled in the hooks and the eye bolt was welded from the backside.
There are 4 such torch holders, 1 at each end and side of the welder. Very handy to have when welding or transporting the whole rig. To the right of the torch you can see where 2 of the mounting bolts that attach the whole apparatus to the welder are installed.
After it was fabricated it was off to see Rick and his gang at
R & B Powder Coating:
http://rbpowdercoat.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/R-B-Powdercoat-478593278995132/
...for the final finish work.
This is looking at it upside down. Rick's work continues to be exceptional.
I had the cooler drip pan powder coated silver to match the stainless steel cooler...
...but the parts tray was color coordinated with the welder in Miller Blue.
So here's the finished product.
Note that shielding was installed over the torch lines that carry gas, coolant and electrical.
All in all a very useful project that is practical, ruggedly built, long lasting powder coated and to my eye, an attractive addition to the shop.
I have more coming this way, stand by. Thanks again everyone.
Thomas
Hope you check back here, I've got some non-house related material coming up I suspect you'll like as well.
