Tube Benders

Just in case i need to get my tubes bent professionally - I called some.
I started with Barnshaws - as they came up first on a google search and ive always been impressed with the arch of railway line outside their factory in Tipton. Helpful as they were, my job is clearly too trivial for a company that has the "capacity to curve tubes up to - 1067mm o/d." So they put me onto Formbend who were also very helpful but only had one set of formers for my diameter of tube, so unless I wanted all my bends to be of 80mm radius, they couldnt help me. So they put me onto Accurate Section Benders who appear to be able to do whatever i want.
I shall send them a spec and see what thier prices are like

Bending pipes

I have been avoiding this for ages. I have been scared of bending the tubes for my frame. Why have I been scared though?
1. I was concerned that the pipe-bender wouldn't be up to it.
2. I was worried that I'd get it wrong and have to scrap some of that expensive pipe.
3. I didn't really have a fixed frame design
And so I simply kept avoiding the issue - and the trike project has stayed dormant
However, following through with my holiday resolution and bolstered by a renewed motivation and energy (that comes with a sunny Sunday morning) yesterday I bent some pipe :-)

I now see why so many trikes are made out of angle iron - bending pipe is not as simple as you'd like it to be.

I still didn't really have a fixed design for the frame, but I took an intuitive stab at what I thought 'looked nice' for the lower rails, plotted the curve on a piece of cardboard and just went for it. The pipe bender (12 tonnes) works a treat. I remember someone telling me that the secret was to bend the pipe in little bites, working round the curve - as opposed to simply pumping away in one bend.
I had spent some time a few months ago filing out one of the cast dies to suit my specific diameter of tube, So I was all set..... or so I thought.
You will see from the photos that although the pipe will bend, the pressure is such that the rollers are marking the tube (i don't think this is a 'dent' as such - ie not a significant structural weakness - it just looks horrid)
And so I made up a couple of wooden formers to spread the load a bit - and these worked well until they broke up (as you'd expect under 12 tonnes).
By this time it was "Happy Hour" (another bring-back from holiday) and so I packed up for the day.
And so I'm left with another predicament that if I'm not careful will turn into another barrier to making progress..... what to do about bending tubes? As I see it I have 4 options...
1. Just get on and bend the buggers - it might not look lovely but what the heck - you can probably linish out those marks - this is not my preferred option
2. Get some big rollers turned up that will suit my tube - expensive?
3. Get someone else to bend the pipe for me - but could i specify the design? this is something that I'm inventing on the fly
4. Get someone else to bend the curvy parts for me and then I weld them in between the straight bits - this seems like a bit of a fag and a risk to the integral strength of the frame, but my welding experience with CWB shows that I can make a good enough weld both structurally and cosmetically that this might be the simplest way to go - and it might give me more flexibility when it comes to working things out on tube that need to bend in more than one plane. I shall phone a bender this afternoon

Holiday resolution

Aren't holidays great? :-) I love the sense of freedom, both physically and mentally. I can spend ages sitting on a beach looking out to sea or balancing some rocks, enjoying all the conversations that rush around inside my head. I always have bright ideas when Im on holiday and I also get a good clarity on whats important in my world.
Forget New Year for making resolutions - Holiday time is when I make my resolutions. I invariably resolve to get on with something when I return, and this year was no exception.
And so on my return from holiday, I set about clearing the garage out so I could get some good access to the trike again. I chucked out the fridge freezer that we used for storing drinks in and I stripped the piano string frame to its bare minimum and moved it into the garden where it now sits as a bit of musical sculpture. And so the project can start again :-)

New skills, new solutions

In its-self, this is not particularly interesting or clever, but it wasnt until I was tidying up after a days work on making my welding trolley that I had a sudden realisation just how the world had changed for me.
Now that I have a degree of skill to weld metal together (though I still have a lot of practice to do be be anywhere near good) and now that I have the equipment to do so, my world has changed - or rather my world has expanded - as if Ive just opened a door in my life that until now has been locked.
This little jig is neither clever or interesting - but it is an illustration of how my mind can now explore solutions that until now werent available to me.
I needed to bend some 50mmx3mm flat strip into an odd shaped bracket - before i had the facilities to weld I would have crudely bashed the metal into shape in the vice, but now that I have welding available to help me solve problems, without even thinking about it, I simply made a little bending jig, and 30 minutes later, I had a device that could create far more accurate (and a darn sight quieter) bends and shapes
As I say it wasnt until the end of the day that I realised just how much the acquisition of a new skill (and tools) can shift (or widen) your approach to solving problems...... I wonder how this trike might progress if I were to take a course on embrodery?

Top TIG tips for trike welders

What have I learnt from a 2 day welding course? Well here is a simple bullet list of some of the notes I jotted down over the 2 days.
- TIG welding is a fine craft. Unlike arc-welding, TIG is quiet, clean, fine and gentle. At times a fine weld can feel a bit like jewellery making. Watching Tom lay down a root weld was sometimes difficult to actually see his hand moving at all. Any thoughts of wacking down a couple of yards of half inch fillet weld are a bit mis-lead.
- Keep the tungsten electrode tip clean and sharp. There really is no point carrying on welding when you've burnt the point off. Its certainly a pain to keep stopping and grinding the electrode, but a clean point makes a world of difference. Hopefully as my skill develops, I wont have to make so many trips to the bench-grinder.
- The electrode tip can protrude beyond the gas shroud pretty well as much as you like. Typically 1/4" to 1/2", but as I found out, in tight spaces you might want to extend the tip out quite a way; you just have to invent a smart way to keep the shield gas contained on the arc.
- Although the TIG torch has what seems like a 'handle' - you are not obliged to hold it like that. holding the shroud like a pencil gives far greater control, and often an awkwardly positioned joint might be accessed best with a quite odd upside-down grip. I was surprised that holding the shroud wasnt as hot or dangerous as i'd imagined
- I like to wear thin leather gloves as these give the best possible 'feel' of the objects you are working with. However, I soon learnt that i was better off with a thin glove on the hand with the filler-rod, and a thicker glove on the torch hand (especially when pencil-gripping the shroud)
- Keep the tip perpendicular to the line of weld, though a slight feed in angle is ok.
- Planning a section of weld is critical. how you position your arm, body to ensure a smooth and consistant travel makes for a lovely weld.
- Using a foot-switch helps with ease of welding. ie you dont have to fiddle around reaching for the thumbswitch on the torch handle - particularly if you are pencil gripping the torch. I think I shall have to invest in a foot switch for my own welder.
- It appears that 50A to 90A is going to be quite sufficient to weld my tube.
- For what I'm going to be doing, I dont need to switch on the pulse option (especially useful for aluminium), or 'slope-down' (crater-fill)
- Gas flow of about 4-6 liters/min
- Try different face masks. I used an auto-darkening mask which seemed to work well for me, but TVOR didn't get really going until he'd ditched the auto-darkening mask for a much darker fixed mask.
- practice, practice, practice

All good things must come to an end

TVOR and I had been pondering on what would be the perfect length of a welding course. Initially I had thought that one day would surely be enough to pick up enough tips and tricks to go off and practice at home. But after doing the first day of this course, I was very glad to be looking forward to a second day to do more practice under the guidance of an expert.
However come the end of day 2... i was pretty bushed and needed some time out to think about what I'd learnt. So all in all I think a 2-day welding course is just about right..... which is probably why CWW design it that way.
While TVOR was having a go at fillet welding stainless steel and aluminium, I finished off my course with welding up the section of my own pipe that id bought with me - a section of the real tube that I will be using for the Trike. In theory the next proper bit of welding I might be doing after this course is highly likely to be on the trike for real - so I had to bite the bullet at some stage.
Im not convinced it was my best bit of welding that day, but I was sure as heck happy enough with it and there is no way those bits of metal are going to come apart - this is going to be a safe trike as well as a good looking one too.
So thanks to TVOR for being there and sharing the experience with me, and thanks to Tom for his support and encouragement

Awkward welds

Working on the test pieces on the benches is great for developing the skills, but lets face it, how much of my trike am i going to be able to weld in 'class-room' like conditions? At the risk of trying to run before I could walk, I was keen to see what it felt like to have to weld awkward joints in awkward positions, so Tom set me up a couple of scenarios - an acute angle, and an overhead weld. I can happily say that if im ever faced with an overhead weld, i'd rather turn the project upside down ("yes Sarge, i DO think it would be better if we roll that Mark VIII (Liberty) tank over, you know how much overhead welding does my neck and back in")
As for the acute angle in an awkward position, well I reckon those are just about manageable - as long as you prepare the site to get yourself comfortable. I reckon one of the keys to a successful and tidy TIG welded joint is to prepare your working area so that you can get in a comfortable and braced position. Tom talks of tack welding bars and braces onto the job simply for the welder to rest/lean/support against (then grinding them off after the joint is made)

Practice makes perfect

Our course ran from 9am to 4pm. I thought it was a bit light-weight to be finishing at 4pm..... until about 3pm when you realise that actually this is quite tiring! Not only on the muscles, but on the concentration and also the eyes. So 4pm seemed like a reasonable time to pack up when you got there.
I was also surprised that there was no tea or coffee available (there was a sarnie van over the road) but on reflection, there just wasnt enough time to stop for trivial things like a cup of tea - this was full on welding. Tom demonstrating, us attempting, Tom guiding, us attempting..... practice practice practice.
The great thing was that we had endless consumables (gas, filler rods, tungsten electrodes - and man we consumed our fair share of those) and endless material to weld together. The TIG machines we were using were the size of a chest freezer and had an endless duty -cycle so there was simply no excuse not to practice welding.
On reflection we must have both welded for 6 hours a day - for 2 days..... thats 24 hours of nonstop welding (if you dont count the numerous pauses to regrind the electode tips that we kept burning off) - so at an estimated welding rate of say 3mm/second (if i learnt anything these last couple of days, its that TIG welding is a 'gentle' process) - thats 250 meters of welding between us [that cant be right can it? the numbers stack up, and we didnt do anything other than weld - even if you halved that figure to account for grinding tips and watching Tom demonstrate - thats still a heck of a lot of welding practice for a couple of amateurs]

Lets go and learn

There is only so much you can learn about welding from watching youtube tutorials and reading books. In the end you have to get some master guidance and then lots of practice. So with that in mind, TVOR and I set off to Coventry to spend a couple of days in the company of expert welder Tom at the Coventry Welding Workshop.
CWW appears to be joined with CBW (Coventry Building Workshop) where a number of youths seemed very productive in the plastering and bricklaying bays. However on the other side of the wall - in the CWW welding bays, TVOR and I had the place to ourselves. Heaven :-)
We had requested some hands on TIG learning with minimal theory and plenty of practise - and that is exactly what we got. Within minutes of arriving, Tom had us welding! He demonstrated a couple of runs (making it look of course Oh-so-simple) and then got us to work.
When I booked the course I mentioned that I was building a trike out of 2" pipe so Tom had read prepared for us a tray of cut and beveled 2" pipes - it was clear that he wasnt going to let us stand around doing nothing.

INTERMISSION

There will be a brief intermission in this project while the builder waits for warmer days to start handling cold metal again.
In the meantime we bring you BLACK CHISEL
Enjoy, and please tune back to Black spanner in a a few weeks time where you will see a renewed enthusiasm to get a rolling chassis :-)

Learning to weld

So not much physically happening on the trike - but that doesnt mean that things have gone quiet.
After my initial practices at TIG welding (BTW my plasma TV is still hanging on the wall ;-) and after watching a whole bunch of youtube welding tutorials, I realise I am nowhere near good enough to create a trike frame that i'd be proud enough of to see on the cover of BSH. And so i need some training.
Fortunately there is a welding training college not far from here which run courses not only for apprentice marine pipe welders but for the public DIY man too.
The people at Coventry Welding Workshop seemed very accomodating, and when I mentioned this to TVOR, he seemed very interested too...... So weve booked a 2 day workshop for the end of this month. Weve asked for a very much hands on/lots of welding practice event with minimal H&S/metallurgy nonsense - and the coventry welding workshop people seem happy with that.
So not only will this be a gaining new skills session, but a father and son bonding moment too :-)