Blog Reflection

This is my last post, and just let me start off by saying i truly enjoyed this project and am glad Ms. Wenzell allowed me to do something so incredible and personally enjoyable. There was a lot of time and effort that went into this project and many things that were new and outside what I am used too. also in the fabrication process there was many things that did not quite fit right and instead of redoing the entire part we used creative solutions to fix the problem. My mentor and I collaborated on all aspects of this project and none of this would have been possible without his guidance, he is a great teacher and he did not even complete high school.

I learned a lot from this project, not all was welding. I learned about responsibility as I had meetings to keep while working around other things such as golf and night school. I also learned to manage my time better and that procrastination although used is not the easier way. Also I learned that if you are going to do something give it your all because you never know who will see it or what opportunities will present themselves from your effort. I also gained a wealth of knowledge about welding and can only hope one day I will be able to use my knowledge again.

There was a lot of calculations that had to be done and it was a bit of a challenge to figure these out out it was a lot of decimal conversions that had to spot on our else the product would not come out square/correct. I haven't had any math for about a year so it was difficult to get back into the swing of things and figure out the calculations. It was also difficult to make every weld consistent and acceptable, I had an extremely hard time stopping and starting again on the same weld and making it look all look like one weld. also heat was a big problem as welding creates so much heat that effects the way parts look and fit together. That said there was nothing me and my mentor could not figure out and fix.

week 7

This week we set out to finish the stool, it has been a couple of weeks since I have seen AL because of scheduling conflicts. The stool is slowly but surely coming together as i weld each individual piece together and then have to make sure it will all fit together before I move on to the next piece. So far so good as we have only had to fix about two or three mistakes on both of our parts. one of the biggest challenges is being able to make something you visualize a reality. It is one thing to make a drawing but it is a completely different thing to make it real, sometimes thing just don't work the way you think they are supposed too. After all my work and all of Al's help i finally completed my stool and it looks pretty good. It is a little tall but other than that i am completely satisfied with it. Now the only thing left for me to do is take it home and make a seat for it. i am extremely happy with welding and would strongly pursue it as a career after a graduate from college.

week 6

This week me and my Mentor Al began the fabrication project of creating a stool. this was a new process for both of us as we had never made a stool before, so we had to figure out each step as we went. The first process in making the stool was the lay out, we had to figure out how tall it should be, how wide the stances of the stool was going to be, the diameter of the seat, how far up the stool to put our foot rests, and how far to put those foot rests apart. there is an overwhelming amount of work that goes into the fabrication process. This is why I decided not to go with my original idea of making a bicycle frame, because after discussing it with Al he made me realize the amount of time that would needed to be put into it was too much for the time we had left. which is okay I am perfectly fine with making a stool as I would be making a frame, as long as get to weld and fabricate it didn't matter. After we got the layout we choose a material, I thought the square tubing was cool and looked cool so I picked that. We then came up with a drawing and the dimensions for everything. We then began to form all the parts we needed for the metal around the shop. using the press break, saw, grinder, plasma torch, and other tools. and that was all the time we had for this week.

week 5

This week i have reached 20 hours but it doesn't feel like it has been. These passed weeks learning how to weld have been one of the funnest and most educational times in my academic career. This week i have moved on to what i think is the best type of welding, and what is used on a lot of stuff by both professionals and those who need to fix something of theirs every once in a while. It is called tig welding, and it involves a long unshielded rod made of the same material that you want to weld. You then have to go to the tig machine and adjust the temperature, voltage, and how you want the current to flow. you then have establish a ground via a clamp with a cable. you then have to make sure you have the correct tungsten and cup on the tig gun for the type and thickness of your metal. Finally you are ready to weld once you turn on the machine and shielding gas. You then start by pushing the trigger on the tig gun and forming a pool of metal that you steadily move forward as you dip the rod into this pool every time you move. It sounds difficult, and at first it is, but like anything in life practice makes perfect and the more i did it the better and easier it became for me to do it. i really enjoyed learning to tig weld and i hope next week will be just as fun.

week 4

This week I finally am able to produce an efficient and nice looking weld, this means that i can now move on to the next thing which is arc welding. Arc welding is probably the strangest of the three welding techniques and this one is definitely harder than mig. This style of welding requires a rod that is hooked up to a ground on the machine and a ground on the table/surface you are working on. the rod and material then creates an arc and melts the rod you are holding. This style took a little bit to get used to and has some draw backs. one draw back is you go through the rods quite quickly especially if doing a large area or section.it is pretty close to a thing called brazing which i have done before so it wasn't to hard to pick up on and get used to. I am really enjoying myself so far and am thrilled to learn more things every time I come here.

week 3

This is my third week coming back here and I already have accumulated 12 hours which is about half of the required hours for my project. I am definitively going to be putting in more hours than the required time, and i am definitively okay with that. i do have to admit that these first weeks are getting kind of repetitious, but this is no fault of Al's. He asked me if I wanted to try something else out and I said no I wanted to become proficient in mig welding first. Although after I did my butt joint welds and t joint welds he let me use the plasma cutter, and yes it was as cool as it sounds. The plasma cutter is well you guessed it, a two foot torch that gets so hot it becomes super heated plasma making the material look like a hot knife through butter. And because these pieces i was cutting where used for no particular reason i could do whatever I wanted on them. So the first thing I did was cut my name out on a quarter inch steel plate which I now hang in my room. I honestly really enjoy everything about doing this stuff so far and i really hope the next weeks to come are like this  

week 2

This week in welding I began learning the basics of welding and went over the different aspects of the mig machine. Mig welding is a type of welding where the electrical current that creates the massive amount of heat, flows through the rod that is automatically fed the the gun. This type of welding is a very common type of welding used out in the welders field, it is quicker, cheaper, and more consistent than other types of welding. As of right now I am just getting a general feel/ technique of welding steel on steel with the mig machine. Mr. Baer says after I become proficient in this type of welding I can move on to the other types they have at the shop. Learning these things and being allowed the opportunity to learn such things really excites me and makes me happy. I really enjoy learning how things work and why they work that way and I'm excited for our next session.  

week 1

Hello my fellow people,
      This is obviously my first blog so do not judge me too harsh. My physical Senior Capstone project is welding and fabrication. I got my mentor from my mother's work which is a specialty welding shop hear in South City. The best part about this arrangement is I get to use all their material and tools for free. My mentor is a pretty sick guy, he used to work for N.A.S.A. (to bad it was shut down), he also taught the welding class at the College of San Mateo. The first day I was there I found out they bought I new mig machine which is pretty sick. The first week I started with the new mig and practiced the general techniques of welding, and learned the safety steps and set up needed when welding. I started with straight beads on just one piece of steel to just practice my technique and figure out the right amperage and voltage for the thickness of steel I was using. To create the small piece of steel he showed me how to use and operate the steel press which can put up to 3000 pounds of pressure in order to cut the steel. This is what I did for the first week of welding and I really enjoyed it so far as we go through everything step by step, and I'm excited to learn more with our next meet up