BTW, very sorry to hear about your misfortune Ron.
Well, I have recovered mentally from my door patch welding fiasco enough to
decide a plan of attack. I simply cut straight down the weld and removed the
patch panel completely, cleaned up the hole and removed the flange that was
left after the cut. Now I have a hole and a patch panel minus a flange. I
then used hammer and dolly to clean up the warping (that went really well)
and cleaned up the patch panel I removed as well. Now with all straight, I
made a few unorthodox decisions.
At this point, I might add that I appreciate some things about NOT having a
formal education in this stuff. One of them being I havent lost any
creativity in arriving at decisions that might go against a teacher or a
book somewhere. Heres what I decided to do.. you tell me if its gonna work
or not!
Since I lost the length of the flange in the removal, I needed to add one. I
chose to add a 16 gauge flange (quite a bit thicker than the patch panel but
not ridiculous). I didnt stop there. I reasoned that if I am gonna add a
thicker piece to the welding area, why not also make the metal strip I am
cutting into a flange "L" shaped to add a good strong reinforcement all the
way across the panel. This would be equivalent to adding a piece of angle
iron under the weld across a very unstable and easily warped area.
I drilled small holes in the flange, clamped the patch panel to it, and spot
welded the pieces together. With the proper gas... 88% Argon, 12% CO2, it
really makes a difference in penetration, less splatter, and a smoother
weld. In addition, I followed some of your suggestions.. I used compressed
air to immediately cool the welds which works amazingly fast. I also found
through trial and error that a setting of "F" and "5" (equates to pretty
darn hot and pretty darn fast) worked best even tho you run the risk of
blowing holes in the metal. You must get in and get out quick this way, but
you get better penetration and a more melted, smoother weld that can very
easily be ground off later.
So, at this particular moment, I have the patch panel spot welded into place
with the thick "L" flange under the weld line. So far so good and today I
plan on working more on it. The plan is to make a series of spot welds in
opposite places using compressed air for cooling and not weld anything until
all the metal is cool to the touch. In taking my time I plan on avoiding the
warpage but a lot of the local guys say its a virtual impossibility since
across the door there is no reinforcement. But now there is, so I should
soon
be able to tell you all how it turned out.
Deve Krehbiel
Hesston, Kansas
1950 3100 * 1949 3600
www.speedprint.com/Deves50/index.html
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