Hydroforming with a pressure washer

Cool! But damn, I was feeling good about building a fancy aluminum cell phone holder. I need to up my game with propulsion or something. :)

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.

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.

One thing is clear. He is a GOOD welder. Besides a few pinholes, the welds on that thing held through some serious torture.

Jon

That was my thought, too, although I don't TIG weld and I don't know what would be reasonable.

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...

That's really interesting. I wouldn't have guessed that it would work so well.