Lessons Learned by Doing
You can research articles, view a ton of YouTube videos, and talk to experts, but until you get your hands dirty you’re not going to get the full learning experience. I pride myself in doing research and due diligence; however, it’s never as complete a learning experience as doing it.
This page is dedicated to the many lessons I’ve learned by actually doing. Please note I do not profess to be an expert or that the lessons I’ve learned are correct or perfect, but they are golden nuggets of experience that have helped me in my journey.
Welding
One of the key skills I hoped to learn was welding. I’ve wanted to learn this most of my adult life and it’s a crying shame I waited until my retirement to begin. Never-the-less, better late then never.
I purchased a Harbor Freight Titanium 170 MIG welder and am using flux core wire to help keep costs down vs using gas. This welder really works well and I have been very pleased. I also bought an online welding class from TimWelds.com which taught me a lot of the basics. I now mostly use .035 size flux core wire and run the welder on 220 V. The 220 V really kills it when welding thicker materials.
Before beginning welding my cyclekart, I took on another learning project first. I wanted a boat tug to move my ski boat and the commercially available tugs I saw that met the minimum power requirements were $1500 to $2500. So I bought 1.5 x 1.5 square tubing, some 1.5 x 1.5 angle, a 1 HP winch from Harbor Freight, a 12 V battery from Costco, and gears and 41 pitch chain via Amazon.
I watched a lot of DIY YouTube videos and then set forth on designing my version using Fusion 360 CAD program which I also had to learn to use.
To make a long story short, my design was flawed, my welds were horrible looking, and I had to redo and rework the design over and over until it actually worked. My first attempt to move the boat nearly threw me like a trebuchet. The second, third, and fourth attempts were accompanied by rescue teams, fire extinguishers, medics, and a crane to lift the boat off of me if needed.
My estimated build of one to two days ended up taking me about three weeks! I gained a really deep appreciation for the difficulty in fabricating parts in metal. I was pretty good at woodworking and Ok in aluminum work, but working with steel is another thing entirely.
Thanks to my persistence, I eventually ended up with a working boat tug that I lovingly dubbed Frankenstein.
My welds were hit and miss and I couldn’t tell you why they turned out good some times and bad most of the time. I did learn that the variables included the right wire speed, voltage, inductance, stick out, stick angle and the speed at which I welded. Getting all those right initially seemed virtually impossible.
I unfortunately, did not have the benefit of having an experienced welder looking over my shoulder to coach me along, so I just had to figure it out on my own.
Fortunately, the welds as bad looking as they were, all held despite the enormous pressure they experienced by the weight of the boat. That was at least comforting knowing that I might build a cyclekart that won’t fall apart at 50 mph.
After completing Frankenstein, I watched the welding videos once again and learned that watching the melted puddle as it develops was highly critical. All my earlier attempts really did not focus on this singular point. To better facilitate my focus on the puddle, I bought high powered LED lights to really lighten up the area where I was welding and also put on 2X magnifiers. The lights, magnifier and focus on the puddle made all the difference in the world! By using the welder machine recommended settings for the given situation, I found I had a good starting point and as I got more and more experience, I could see how tweaking the settings improved my welds.
So lights, improved vision for these old eyes, and real focus on the weld puddle turned things around very significantly.
Welding Heat & Distortion
Once you get your welding half descent, you had better cool your jets and not overheat your material or it will warp on you. It’s hard to put down the welding gun and let things cool down or to proceed to another area before completing your weld. Its surprising how badly the chassis frame can get out of alignment when welding long runs. So keeping things clamped down and taking it easy are really critical. It just take discipline and more time than you might otherwise think.
Grinding
It was Steve Vinson who once said, we’re not good welders, we’re good grinders, or something to that affect. And it turns out that more true words have never been said of us first time welders.
In cleaning up my welds I discovered a few things.
- Get yourself multiple grinder machines. One for your grinder disk, one for the cut-off disk, another for the flap sander, and yet another curved end flap disk to do work inside corners and bends. Using one grinder machine and constantly stopping to exchange disks will be a huge time killer and drive you nuts. Harbor freight sells them for just $10 when they are on sale, so do yourself a big favor and set yourself up for success from the beginning.
- Start with the grinder disk first then proceed to flap sanding disk.
- Use a special rounded edge flap disk for inside corners and bends; they are marvelous!
- When you have welds that follow curves (or even around a circle), use the grinder disk to first cut out the shape or profile you want, then proceed to a smooth transition. If you don’t cut out a desired profile first, you’ll end up with an undefined and messy looking edge.
Chassis Fixture
If you intend to build a simple chassis or a more complicated one, do yourself a big favor and take the time to build a welding fixture first. If you don’t, chances are you will end up with an untrue frame and spend more time and energy in fixing things than doing them right at the beginning. If you’re like me, you are so eager to cut metal and begin welding that not taking time to properly setup a welding fixture for your chassis will come back to haunt you. Dennis Thomas and Steve Vinson, clearly point this out in building your chassis. Listen to experience and build yourself a fixture so your chassis won’t be warped or imperfectly aligned. Don’t ask me how I know this.
Bending Metal On a Buck
After watching several YouTube videos I became convinced that bending aluminum around curve shapes was best accomplished using a buck. I had formed many aluminum airplane ribs as a kid when my Dad built his T-18 airplane. But the material was thinner and we had relief cuts and shrinked the material every few inches using shrinking pliers he had built.
For my complex shaped radiator, I needed a 2″5 bent edge to create the width of the radiator but I instinctively knew I could not bend that much material given all its curves. So I made the flange 1″. But that too proved way too much material. I had it bent over on itself in many areas. I removed it from the buck, trimmed it back to 1/2″ then rinserted it back into the buck and successfully worked the material to where it shrunk or stretched to the necessary degree.
Before reinserting it back into the buck, I tried freehand shaping it using different bucking bars. The front face ended up warping and I lost control. So I partially straightened the material and reinserted it back into the buck afterwhich things went so much more smoothly. Why I didn’t do that to begin with shows my stupidity and shortcut mindedness. In the process I learned to make a great buck and stick to it. I ended up really banging the heck out of the front bottom edge so it will been a lot of work to smoothen it out. As I was attempting to have a clean metallic structure I could have anodized or powder-coated, I could not use any body filler. But that seemed impossible now, so I had to either start from scratch with another piece of aluminum or go another route. The lesson I learned was I could not go more than 1/2″ using .040 on a 90 degree bend around complex curves without employing a more dramatic means of shrinking or stretching the material.