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Alex has some big old riding lawn mower with a broken bracket on it. He had
tried bolting the bracket down, but it was so rusted there wasn't really
anything to bolt down. So when I went out for his birthday party I took my
little 110v mig welder out there to see what I could do.
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First thing I had to do was find some metal to replace the rusted stuff. I
found some angle iron in a corner. I cut off a piece with the grinder for the
first side, but it
didn't quite fit right between the bracket and the mower deck. I had to
adjust it with a hammer I found behind the workbench.
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The other side needed a little spacer piece cut and welded first, so the
angle iron would sit flat. I used the angle grinder to make one. This is
the second time I've gone out to weld for Alex, and each time I have figured
"I don't need to take the chop saw". Next time I'm taking it no matter what.
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The angle iron went in pretty easily on both sides. I had to fill in gaps in
several places by building up the weld bead. The beads are pretty ugly, but
I got good penetration. I did both the hammer test and the jumping up and
down on it test, and passed both. I'm not sure why my welds are looking
worse lately. It could be lack of practice, or it could be because I'm
working with rusted rather than new metal.
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Here's some shots of the repaired mower. Hopefully you can see where the
patches are, because they're surrounded by shiny weld bead.
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Update: I posted a link to this page on the sci.engr.joining.welding
newsgroup, asking how I could make the welds look prettier. I got some great
responses, which I summarize as:
- Use a figure 8 motion, rather than a side-to-side stitching motion for the
bead
- Don't build up so much bead on the weld
- Don't stop so frequently; run longer continuous beads
- Adjust the stickout, by moving further away for thinner metal when necessary
(less heat)
- Put more emphasis on cleaning and fitting the work before welding
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