January 31, 2013

Heat recovery plate fabrication for a fireplace

We had a customer that had a neat project, so here we are documenting a heat recovery plate fabrication project needed for a fire place.  To start we’ve been busy hoisting around some 3/8″ steel in the shop to get ready to cut and weld.  We also found it interesting to do a cut comparison between a local laser cutting shop and our in house CNC plasma table.  The laser sample is on the left, we are very proud of the cut quality with our CNC table and this shows it.  The CNC cut has a square, straight and sharp edge, while as the laser cut piece is a bit thicker (1/2″ vs 3/8″) the cut quality is very poor, pictures speak a thousand words.

heat recovery plate fabrication

This heat recovery plate setup was designed by the customer, we just cut it out and welded it. They are installed one set at a time and interlock with each other once in the fireplace.

heat recovery plate fabricationheat recovery plate fabrication

The pieces are TIG welded together after coming off the CNC table.  We pride ourselves on high cut quality, and to go along with high quality welding will always yield a very nice finished product.

January 24, 2013

Finishing up a Christmas gift

We get so busy in the shop at times that we don’t have time to finish gifts for our friends and family during the Christmas season.  So this Christmas gift came a bit late.

Some 10 gauge 44w steel CNC cut on the table, mill scale stripped, lightly sanded and sealed.

Christmas gift cnc cut

January 23, 2013

Building an ITB (individual throttle body) setup

We had a customer come to us with an OEM manifold and a set of throttle bodies from a motorcycle.  We merged the two together, we didn’t get any photos building an ITB, but here is a photo of the final product.

Building an ITB

 

We simply cut the OEM manifold off at the runners (roughly where the welds are) and sanded the surface down till it was flat and so that the spacing for the center two runners were straight.  We then bead blasted the manifold to clean it up prior to any fitting or welding.  Once the manifold was cleaned we cut four Ø1.5″ 0.064″ thick 6061-T6 tubing to adapt to the individual throttle bodies.  The tubes were ovalized on one end and fitted up with existing runners.  Once completed we tacked the tubing onto the runners and then welded them in place.  The little beads at the end of the tubes are to ensure that the hose clamps that are securing the rubber tubing doesn’t slip.  It’s an alternative way to having the tubing bead rolled.