New But Not

[welder_one]

hello all, my name is stan darnell. i am new to this site, but not new to melting metal. i weld for the interstate highway sign corporation. mostly aluminum, but i have spent alot of years in the quarries working with high pressure, and structural steel. my hobbies are to take scrap and make something good. my last project was i took scrap aluminum and made arkansas' only aluminum pedestrian bridge, then donated it to a charter school close to the house. i would like to show pics, but i don't know how. maybe someone would tell me how to post a few pics.

[dabar39]

Welcome

Always glad to welcome new blood to the board, would really like to see some of your projects. To add pics to your post , scroll down to the manage attachments button, in the new window click on the browse button and find the pis you want then click upload and walaa you're posting pics. Dave

[welder_one]

ok, first try to show some pics of the bridge. if it works, thanks for the help. if it doesn't i'll try again.

[welder_one]

other projects are stuff to see if i could, like a grill from the tank out of a hot water heater, or a gate that weighs 600 pounds and swings on one post, things like that. the hard part is it mostly is scrap metal. no new metal was purchased fo any projects, except for the gate, i had to buy some amazing hinges...lol

[welder_one]

more pics later, have to go to work now

[BWS29128]

Welcome to the board, Stan! Your pictures are awesome! I love your aluminum bridge (I also love it when anybody posts anything that Dave will respond to since we get to see him sitting next to his race car with a hottie!--pay attn to his signature for more information).

A few questions: what kind of equipment are you using to weld aluminum? What brands, what setups, what wire, etc etc etc?

If you get a chance, check out JimYo's website at http://www.jimyo.com he's got some amazing stuff!

~Clint

[welder_one]

i have a miller legend ae/ad 200le engine drive, an arc one inverter cc machine, an xmt 304 with xr-a push-pull feeder with a 30 foot xr edge gun for aluminum, and also a millermatic 350p for just about everything else. my wife was not happy about the price of that one...lol
mainly i use 0.35 wire 5356 alloy for aluminum because i dont post heat treat. if i get a request for that then i will use 4043 alloy. although the 4043 will not anodize to the same color as the parent metal. it all depends...

[BWS29128]

Arc One Inverter?

I'm not familiar with Arc One inverters...what are they? The 350p sounds like an awesome machine....I'm jealous!! (of course, I'm not jealous of the fact that you have to come face to face with your wife's anger...) Hee Hee

I love Miller's 304 welders, but my Champion 10,000 won't power it and the money for a wire-feed system (as opposed to a spool gun) just isn't in my cards at the moment...

~Clint

[HMW]

Cool bridge.

I bought the Millermatic Pulser, and as soon as I did they discontinued it and made the 350P instead. More money but bigger machine.

[kevindsingleton]

One problem: the troll goes under the bridge!

Just kidding! Great work. I really like the bridge. Very clean and stout. Well done!

[welder_one]

thanks for the compliments on the bridge, it was alot of fun. the upper and lower frame is made of 3x3 .125 wall square and the "webbing" is of 2x2 1/4 wall square. the deck cross members are made of 3/8 structural square zee bar 3x3. i also forgot to mention that i also have a synchrowave 200. it is dedicated to tig on aluminum, though. as for the question"what is an arc one inverter?" it is a 110 volt cc machine made by arc one. smaller than the maxstar by miller and not as good either but 6 to 7 hundred bucks cheaper. i needed a "backpacker machine" to weld some "big *** fans" to girders in a building. see pics below. it is a 24 foot ceiling fan and the 1/0 leads from my legend were too much to handle 45 foot up on an extension ladder. the inverter weighs like 7 to 10 pounds comes with a shoulder strap and will weld 100 amps at 60%. i had to weld up a support frame to the girders to hold up the fans.the fan company is called "big as s fans" check them out at bigassfans.com

[welder_one]

here are some pics of my hot water tank grill

[welder_one]

here is a pic of my old rig truck next to a hitachi ex 1100 shovel. this was in the rock quarries. i had to hard face the bucket. took me about 48 or so hours.

[welder_one]

I love Miller's 304 welders, but my Champion 10,000 won't power it and the money for a wire-feed system (as opposed to a spool gun) just isn't in my cards at the moment...

~Clint

I really like the 304 as well but i wish i had gotten the next one bigger. the arc characteristics on stick are awesome, but when i get to the big aluminum stuff it really starts to lag behind with duty cycle and all.

[wireburner]

Welcome aboard! those are some nice projects