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Step 7Cutting Steel with a Stick Welder
The bumper hitch on my 1978 Toyota truck was rusted rotten.
Ray and I used the golfcart welder with 1/8" 6011 rods to weld some beefy reinforcements on it.
The big toroidal series inductor seen here came from [www.accrc.org/ ACCRC] Maker Day. I should put a few dozen more turns on it to really smooth out the arc. We did some strong agricultural-style welding that isn't going to break or appear in textbooks.
Here's Ray cutting holes for the trailer safety chain to hook on.
We dipped the rods in water and then blasted and pushed the steel out of the way. It works well and makes a surprisingly clean hole while using less rod than you'd think.
Thanks to a reader who suggested dipping the rods in water- I can't find your comment now, what other nifty tricks do you have up your sleeve?
I also tried an improvised air-arc torch using compressed air. It didn't work at all. The air blast blew the arc away, chilled and froze the molten metal instead of burning it. I guess that's why air-arc cutting torches use 500 amps or more
Ray and I used the golfcart welder with 1/8" 6011 rods to weld some beefy reinforcements on it.
The big toroidal series inductor seen here came from [www.accrc.org/ ACCRC] Maker Day. I should put a few dozen more turns on it to really smooth out the arc. We did some strong agricultural-style welding that isn't going to break or appear in textbooks.
Here's Ray cutting holes for the trailer safety chain to hook on.
We dipped the rods in water and then blasted and pushed the steel out of the way. It works well and makes a surprisingly clean hole while using less rod than you'd think.
Thanks to a reader who suggested dipping the rods in water- I can't find your comment now, what other nifty tricks do you have up your sleeve?
I also tried an improvised air-arc torch using compressed air. It didn't work at all. The air blast blew the arc away, chilled and froze the molten metal instead of burning it. I guess that's why air-arc cutting torches use 500 amps or more
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The coil acts as a half of a transformer or an electromagnet.
DC current flowing through creates an magnetic field.
When the arc stops so does the current and the field collapses, but in so doing it induces current in the coil in the same direction like a magnet passing over a generator coil but only for a very brief time.
This effect will help keep the arc going or kick-start a broken arc.
A good analogy would be that it's like the momentum a flywheel gives to an engine between the power strokes.