Hey, I've finally got my breath and had a chance to post. Long story short we are not allowed to use the internet at my new job, so that cuts into prime forum browsing time!
okay here's my long answer. For those of you who missed the show. I was the unfortunate bloke who's gate fell apart. The design was a japanese rising sun. We were given 2 days to design our gate and a nominal budget, a local company supplied all the steel. Among that we had all sorts of other design requirements I won't get into. We had a few hours the day before to precut and layout some pieces, but weren't allowed to weld and could only do 50% of any one type of item.
To the person who asked, our helpers were provided to us at random. All 3 were local Rig welders. I can't say enough good things about my helper. He was the owner and Head welder of mountain man welding
http://www.mountainmanwelding.com/ and a true master of the trade. The beautiful rig trucks you might of caught a glimpse of were his (which he built the beds for) his son was the helper for Valessa. I don't know the specifics of how or why they were chosen but they were all very good welder/fabricators.
Now for the show. the production company had never done a metal working reality show before. As such they weren't AS familiar (and remember these are tv production people, not industry insiderswith the various requirements and such needed for welding. All the welders and 3 plasma cutters were going to be drawn off the same 100A breaker... yah that didn't go well. We also were supplied an extension cord with a powestrip which also came off the same breaker and would also trip due to overloading. The power fluctuations (from another person welding) and from trips was so bad that they took a time out and stopped the clock while it was sorted out. Filming ALMOST stopped for the day until my weld helper brought in 2 welding rigs and several of the welding machineran off idling gas welders instead of the building breaker. Now the other caveat, in order to make this a "hobbyist DYI" type show the lincoln rep donated hobbyist style welding machines (I'll reserve commentst on what I thought of this rep), This means little 110/220 mig and tig machines. The plasma cutters also didn't have the balls to punch through anything over sheet metal consistently so we used a 3rd borrowed plasma cutter that had higher amperage. This ultimately would be my downfall. having been spoiled my whole welding career by using 480 3 phase commercial machines with high duty cycles, I had requested 85/15 and was hoping to tune-in my machine to MIG to hit spray transfer and just penetrate the goodness out of that metal... I never made it with a little 210 MIG machine using .030 wire. I didn't request any stick rods because it's not my favourite or strongest process, we weren't told ahead of time what equipment would be provided other than requesting the electrodes and fillers we wanted
What ended up happening is that I was using the thickest metal of all the competitors, The C channel was about .250" thick where the flange met the web, that little 220 MIG machine didn't have the duty cycle or capacity to penetrate properly. I was bouncing off the duty cycle the whole day, it ended up not even being able to penetrate the 14 ga I used, because it was so abused. we also had several instances where I laid down perfectly good bead only to have it snap moments later with no melt through. Remember we only had 5 hours to build this so there wasn't time to let the machine cool, or TIG every joint. I hadn't requested or planned on using a stick welder so I had access to no rods nor thought to ask. Brent (the winner) spent all his time doing the free form bending and his helper did I would say about 60-75% of the welds nothing in the rules specifically prevented this the judges mentioned this, although it didn't make it on camera. We all had fits with the machines but it hit me harder as I was using thicker material that was all hot rolled.
I was a little mad about cutting the miter wrong (my own fault) but it only set me back about 20 mins, what really set me back was the mig welding that took way longer than I had anticipated, what should of been simple tacks with the mig gun on the sheet metal to L channel ended up taking over 45 minutes as we literally bounced off the top of the duty cycle and the welder would only heat up the wire enough to make it glow. I don't want to blame the weld failures on anyone but me, I just went in with the wrong preconception that I would be using a much beefier welding machine. Anyone who has posted with me over the years knows that I spent my entire welding engineering internship setting parameters for MIG machines, and setting gas specifications I pride myself in being able to dial in machines and having a good working understanding and plenty of practice on mild steel mig. I even know what WFS and V I wanted. Can you imagine how surprised I was when I was handed a machine that had A through G for the Volts and 1-10 for the WFS? I was dissapointed that in 5 hours I don't once claim that that machine could of been dialed in for the material I was using nor did it (and by extension me and my helper) ever make a satisfactory weld with it. The two other competitors faired a bit better as they used much thinner gauge material and Brent stuck to stick welding and having his helper do a good chunk of it. If you notice when my gate failed sheet metal pieces and the skeleton frame was popping off like fireworks, it goes to show how cold a good junk of the welds came out, mostly the ones that were on the wrong side of the duty cycle.
Finally being an engineer and very literal, they specifically said to make the LATCH strong, and indeed I did, it was an 1/8th inch shear plate pin, between 2 pieces of .120" C channel basically that sucker never would of moved. unfortunately if you know anything about statics the weakest element in the force path will fail. seeing how my latch was so strong the next thing to fail was the simple farmers hinges I made (we had to make the hinges). I was ultimately very disappointed by the lack of penetration and strength I got with those hinges, the welder just couldn't penetrate the thick vertical posts that were the outside frame (also didn't have the time to grind off mill scale). If you noticed the other latches failed and swung open letting the gate survive, my latch held but knocked the poor gate off the hinges, which doesn't look good for TV. Also another small point of contention I brought up, but wasn't aired: when they swung the "wrecking ball" they centered it on the latch, basic physics states that the energy in a pendulum is the potential energy from a height differences as I had my latch the lowest the wrecking ball was swung from higher up and was going a little bit faster. I mean not a huge deal and probably not game changing but a full 2 feet of potential energy difference from Valessa's design, drop a 150 pound ball from 2 feet, then drop one from 4 and tell me how it feels when it hits your toes.
Some other interesting things, we did a "welding skills" competition which I won, we got to pick two welds to attempt and had 15 minutes to weld it, the hardest we could think of. I did overhead MIG lap joint, followed by a vertical up GTAW cup walking on 14 gauge to 1/8th inch lap joint. I mean not the hardest welds in history but I won this segment and proud how they came out. The show was originally an hour long format and was changed to a 30 min so a lot of this was cut. It's all personal but a lot of people liked my design too, I'll upload some of the files, but I thought it came out alright given everything. I won't crap on the competitors cause they were nice folk and good welders, but I thought Brent's had too much negative space and was hard to see. It was neck and neck up to the wrecking ball test, I knew before it swung exactly what was going to happen but was asked to play it up to the camera. Which reminds me, anytime I look "sad" or distressed was some subtle editing I had a big smile on my face the whole time cause I got to do what I love, if you have ever met me in person you would know I never get nervous or mad so once I knew I lost I was just having fun being on TV some of the looks are from the end of the 20 hours of filming when I was beat and tired. Finally another feature of the show that never aired was the floor interviews, each of us had an assistant producer who would ask us to explain the building process, having the most technical expertise I was asked the most to explain a lot of the various concepts of welding and fabrication. which took up a considerable amount of my time. It ended up helping the produces but setting me further back.
however they liked my personality and such so much, that they might try to recall me for a different project as a technical consultant or a non competitive show (think building da vinci or the likes)
All tolled I'm glad I did the experience and acted as the face of the next generation of welders even if my showing didn't look the most impressive. I'm proud of what I accomplished with limited tools and an extremely short time frame (who would ever quote a 12 foot span gate as 5 hours of labor?). I received many compliments on my design and off camera a few of the judges expressed regret that I didn't win (but how could I if it fell over?) Although I didn't win the 10K and felt disappointed because I believe I would of if the gate had stayed up, the experience was a net positive and the environment on the set fun and refreshing. I got a few next generation LE hoods, the welding machines we used on the show and some pocket money, plus an interesting story to tell my kids. If this ever leads to another tv opportunity I most likely would jump. I also learned that reality tv is much more scripted/ edited than one would believe. I.E it never came across that we were having FITS about the power, our welding machines were underpowered or half the things we did such as the skills competition, or technical aspects of welding. Sorry for the long post.
Hi Al! ;)
Henry,
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