After I got back I first had to drag out my spool gun, miller 30A, and try to remember which machine I use it on (XMT 304, it is a direct connect using the WC-24), then remember how to set it up. It took me a handful of welds on some scrap to achieve decent welds. I was welding up a glorified aluminum folding scaffold. I had two separate welds that had me chasing my tail. Grind out and rewelded 3-4 times before they stopped turning to ****.
They used screws to hold the platform down, just regular pan head self drilling screws, but they had a torx looking head, but no torx size fit it. No go for Allen’s either. Ended up having to vise-grip out a dozen screws.
once that was out of the shop I turned my attention to my CNC plasma machine. I sent the controller back to the manufacturer because the serial port had gotten worn out over the last 10 years. I hooked it all up only to get the message ‘incorrect version of controller software’. It was telling me I needed to update. The computer is old enough that it wants to connect to the internet via dial up connection. I cringe having to ever connect it because of this. I had to disconnect everything and drag it all into the house and connect it using an Ethernet cable, then try to remember how to get it to connect. Only took an hour, then 5 minutes to update.
Tomorrow I get to cut up a bunch of 304 stainless and try to remember how to weld that using MiG (it marginally confuses me every time because I keep the bottle on the back of my TIG machine, and I do it so infrequently).
