Do your friends think that your metalworking hobby is a boring old thing fo
r phlegmatic, antiquarian farts? If so, let them watch this loon build a pu
lse jet, hydroforming it with an ordinary pressure washer, and then setting
his truck on fire -- sort of -- with the jet.
This is not your garden-variety metalworker:
for phlegmatic, antiquarian farts? If so, let them watch this loon build a
pulse jet, hydroforming it with an ordinary pressure washer, and then sett
ing his truck on fire -- sort of -- with the jet.
We need to be more flamboyant. The guy in that video is beyond flamboyant.
That loon has a series of videos. As near as I can tell he's a good
metalworker, and the loonyness is a way to sell videos.
I've seen other, more serious, applications of hydroforming with a
pressure washer on YouTube. It looks like a solid technique for making
some curved surfaces. In fact, Colin (the loon) has a preliminary video
to that where he gets the washer and experiments with shapes.
Ferinstance, I think you could make a nice motorcycle fender starting
with a banana-shaped flat, puffing it up, and then cutting off the inner
part of the resulting balloon.
Yes. To get serious about it, that method is a real eye-opener. Just wear good safety glasses to protect those open eyes.
I never thought about this before. I have been interested in hydroforming (I've written articles about it), but the thought of machining my own force multiplier kept it in the "too much time to do it" category.
I'm going to look at the related videos and see what's being done.
A search on "pressure washer hydroforming" on YouTube gets a slew of
results.
Dunno if it'll still pop up, but someone made a really nice fuel tank for
a 1910-style motorcycle with one of them.
Given that the usual technique is to weld two flat pieces together, I
think you need to be able to put down a _really smooth_ bead. Hicups on
the weld will translate into nasties in the final part.
Do your friends think that your metalworking hobby is a boring old thing for
phlegmatic, antiquarian farts? If so, let them watch this loon build a pulse
jet, hydroforming it with an ordinary pressure washer, and then setting his
truck on fire -- sort of -- with the jet.
This is not your garden-variety metalworker:
If so, I hope he knows to tuck it inside his shirt. Those old machining photos from the 1920s and '30s, with photos of operators with their ties tucked in, always gave me the creeps.
I DO TIG weld, but I'm quite sure my skills are NOT up to that level. I
definitely can put stuff together, but those welds held despite severe
stress.
Jon
Greetings Jon,
Your welds may be better than you think strength wise. If you are
getting 100% penetration with no voids and no contamination of the
weld or HAZ then I'll be your welds are good enough. I sometimes TIG
weld 3/4" bi-metal bandsaw blades in my shop. The beads are of course
always proud of the surface and after grinding flush I see no porosity
in my welds and the welds always hold. I do do a little TIG welding
for money in my shop but I only weld about a few hours a month on
average. Maybe all you need to do is get better at making pretty
welds.
Eric
It works very well. I've made a few items using this method. Steel is
much easier to work with. Aluminum is a PIA because you need to be 100%
sure that everything is dead soft and you need to watch the pressures or
you just teat things apart...
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