What is a quick way to weld this pipe joint?

Date 06-10-2010 20:25

Fastest and easiest rollout wheel is piece of 1.5" pipe inside a length of 2" sch. 40 that can be set in a Rigid Tri-stand . Or, Weld the 2" onto a couple of pieces of angle Iron tacked or dogged down to a fab table. Weld on a face plate with 2 preset clips (@ 120 degrees apart) and then cut down one arm off a 4 inch "C" clamp Vise grip and tack it at the 3rd point. You can pop it loose really fast and do the "end-o" swap. Sorry I cant post a foto cuz mine's in a storage shed.
Hope this helps.
I buy the Harbor Freight "C" clamp style vise grip thingys for these type jobs all the time. Cut them up and configure them however you need. Since you have 3K of these to make, I would go ahead and fork out the $$s for Vise Grip or some other well made brand. Ya never know about the quality of the Chink stuff from piece to piece. I use 308, 309 or silicon bronze (GTAW) for these kinda tacks on jigs and fixtures.

The other high end option is a lot of fabricators use a cheap (ie. Harbor Freight) lathe chuck and assemble it on to a bearing pillow block with an 18" ring joint metal gasket for the hand/spinner wheel.
I recommend the vise grip option cuz it is FAST to do the end-o swap. A well made jig can save you zillions in $$ and frustration 2/3rds into the project.

FWIW, after 3K of these, I hope you factored enough into your bid for a couple days fishing. You WILL be BURNT OUT.
YES GMAW is the way to go as far as I can read into your post.

Enjoy

By Skaggydog (**)

Date 06-11-2010 14:53

Thank you Superflux. I have edited the drawing to show a bottom view. So if anyone is wondering how Superfluxs' answer mates up with the square plate, it was not discernible when he answered me.

I'm also thinking of a power drive? Maybe a veritable speed drill motor? Or?

By Joseph P. Kane (****)

Date 06-11-2010 15:54 Edited 06-11-2010 15:57

Skaggy dog

I have fabricated some spool pieces like this before. The most time consuming aspect of the project was positioning for tack welding, and tack welding itself. Holding the components square, rigid and true while assembling, tack welding and cooling was quite time consuming and challenging. Cleaning of the tack welds was also time consuming.

For the actual welding of three thousand pipe spools, and the joint indicated, you should consider FCAW. In addition, I recommend that you RENT a small weld positioner with a variable speed motor. After you make a template to center the spool piece on the face plate, vice grips can cut up and modified / welded into a configuration suitable to hold the parts in tight contact for welding. Most positioners have a work lead lug to attach to the earth grounding and the welding machine, so that you get good electrical contact through the rotator face plate.

You have not described what testing these spool pieces have to pass. Short Circuiting GMAW will have more start/ stop Lack Of Fusion (LOF) defects than FCAW, and if any kind of leak testing / hydro-testing is required, the time spent in repair and re-testing, will eat up any savings garnered by short circuiting GMAW.

By Bob Garner (***)

Date 06-11-2010 17:48

The front hub from a Chevy 4wd C10 is a nice rotating assembly. Mount it with the rotating axis vertical. You can bolt it directly to your work bench using the hub's spindle holes, bolt a plate to the disk brake flange, clamp your fabrication to the plate and rotate away. Check the internet for these hubs to see what they look like. My description is not too clear but if you see one of these, you'll understand. New, they cost $50 or so from any Chevy dealer.

By Skaggydog (**)

Date 06-28-2010 04:45

GMAW .035 ER70S-6, 330 Amps., 29.5 volts, 630 IPM WS, 3 revs per weld. The gun is cradled on a stand.

By PipeIt

Date 06-28-2010 20:08

Guys I put a re-ostat on a 300 rigid power head and it worked like a charm.

By cmays

Date 07-02-2010 17:13 Edited 07-02-2010 17:18

If it were me, I would consider GMAW-P in a power wheel (only because I have all these available). From the looks of your picture you are getting an awful lot of destortion on your bottom plate. Im not sure of your part's application so it may very well be acceptable but the answer to getting a proper GMAW weld without cold lap on starts and stops is not always going to be "Crank the heat up and haul A$$" The beauty of GMAW-P is the higher metal deposition with lower destortion especially in a high production setting such as what you are trying to do. If I didnt have GMAW-P capabilities my next option would be to use a FCAW process as previously mentioned. With three passes you are wasting weld metal as well. Your print shows you only need a 1/4" weld. You should be able to get that in one pass. It just seems like you are putting way too much heat and filler metal into the part. This will show up on your bottom line too espescially with a high quantity of parts.

By Skaggydog (**)

Date 07-03-2010 00:05

Thank you much for the reply cmays.

I would have been happier with less distortion. Don't have the power source for the GMAW-P. Tried FCAW, too much slag. Sorry, but I have to disagree with the rest of what you said. Print shows 1/4" root opening. One pass would have built up the heat even more and smaller passes on top of each other help with the grain structure, from all I've read. Anyways GMAW-S is unacceptable so I need the heat per code and a weld takes the same amount of filler no matter how many passes you do it in. At the same wire speed it also takes the same amount of time if no time is spent to clean.

If any of my ideas are wrong, please jump in with your opinions as I am only a beginner.

By cmays

Date 07-03-2010 04:30

Aw hell I miss read your the print compared to what I saw in your picture. I doesnt look like a 1/4" root openeing in the pic but its just the way it is positioned. Plus I was thinking as if it was being done with GMAW-P (and it could be done in one pass with that process Ive done it 1000s of times) but thats out of the question anyway since you dont have the power source. What I meant by wasting filler metal was when you have too much heat you loose your ability to stack iron. Your weld gets flat and wide instead of filling you groove while maintaining a proper throat width. Take the width of your completed weld and compair it to the width of your groove you started with. It obvisously has to tie in at the toe properly but any filler metal past that point of tie in is wasted.