Fiber and Facet

This is a Control Rod Guide Tube I replicated for the Nuclear Engineering Department at the University of Utah. The two halves of the tube have different internal diameters so I needed to devise a tube to flange joint that would lead to a good welding outcome. The entire assembly was modeled in Fusion360, CAMed and CNCed.

This project got started to serve a couple functions. The main reason was my need for a heavy duty, large capacity shop tool box with some personal style. I also wanted to tackle a large scale aluminum fabrication project. The project was designed on AutoCAD. As a project objective, I wanted to make as many of the components for the tool box as possible. The handles are carbon fiber remnant, wheel brackets and pulling/ steering apparatus are stainless steel. I made the wheels with an aluminum body, water jet and pressed on rubber tires and cartridge bearings. The main body of the tool boxes is 6061 while all of the drawers are 5052 bent and welded at the vertical corners.

I made these two gas heating forges as one of my final projects for the Welding Technology Diploma I obtained from Davis Applied Technology College in Utah. I designed and fabricated the two ovens, a small single burner and a little over double the volume dual burner. I made them with the intent of doing light head treating and hot forming of metal. They are lined with 2” 2600 degree fire brick to make them as efficient as they can be. All components are 304ss or 316ss because most of the small forges I had seen looked very poor, and I wanted to make something better. I was required to weld a fair amount of stainless steel for my diploma, but I wanted to be faced with using GTAW on a larger project. Stainless steel requires care and practice to get a satisfactory result, but what other meaningful thing doesn’t? One of the most important lessons I learned from welding school was “if it doesn’t look good, then it isn’t”. Simple but true.

This was another projects I did for my welding technology diploma from Davis Applied Technology College. It seems like I keep saying this, but it was another idea I got off of the internet and tried to improve upon. I went overboard on the collection but I like how it all turned out. This is a very adaptable set of tools for providing inert gas shielding for either the back side of a weld and/ or the trailing portion of a weld. It is absolutely necessary when welding titanium, not a bad idea when welding stainless and will work on other metals to give an extra credit result. The key component to this is the gas diffusion media. In other words, the material which will evenly distribute the shielding gas (argon in most cases) to the material that you want to protect from the atmosphere. It cannot heat up and react with the metal you are welding, as this would cause additional problems.

As a Welder/ Fabricator at Hammerton, these are a sampling of the typical products I have been making.