|
Hello SMMOMS,
I finally got all my toys together, so I could remove that pesky thruster
thru hull a few weeks back.
I've have some picture showing the whole process, you
guys might find interesting.
I ran all three of my compressors together, as I
do for copper slag blasting for a much better flow of air from the Carbon Arc
tool. The valve was a little stiff, so I will replace it with a dead man
valve lever type we use on sandblasting guns to make it much easier to operate.
I just clipped on the stick welding head and started to practice on some scraps.
I tried a number of different amperage settings in both AC and DC. I received
the best results putting my stick welder to full power, in DC at 180 amps.
You have to make sure you have a good connection at the base of the carbon arc
rod, or it will melt that area, and/or heat up the base of the rod so much it
just brakes off. The carbon arc rods are pretty fragile, so you have to be very
careful how you deal with them. I had better results just braking the sticks in
half, and using them that way. The rods have a outer coating of copper to give
the rods some strength. The copper is not needed to create a arc. You can
make holes pretty easily, and for areas you can't get into easily with other
cutting tools, like I had for my thruster thru hull, it's a great tool. One can
also use a plasma cutter for this, if you have one. But you can cut much thicker
material with a much cheaper tool with the carbon arc then with a heavy duty
plasma cutter and perhaps not put as much heat to the part as with a
oxyacetylene torch.
The carbon arcing is just like the EDM (electrical
discharge machining) used to make injection molds and what have you. Giving you
the fine EDM texture one the parts, like you see on many phones, toys, and what
not.
I can see carbon arcing being useful for back
gouging, much faster then grinding, if you get good at it. I could whittle
away a little bit at a time, and see very well what was going on. I did a fair
bit of practice before I started to cut my subs thruster out. I removed
paint and rust from the area I was wanting to cut, for a more conductive
surface to work with. The reason I didn't make as clean of a cut as I
could on there, was I started to make the cut with out the air on, and in that
state, the carbon likes to coat the surface you want cut, instead of
cutting it. Then it will just eat up the sticks, without cutting any thing. So
you then have to clean up the surface again.
I actually received the best cutting results when
cutting a circle on 1/4" steel, by making one gouging pass on the surface, then
go in and cut at a even rate, with the rod all the way thru the plate. So I was
actually at that point arc cutting on the side of the rod. Must be patient and
not rush that pass, since if you do, you will just brake your
rod.
During my practice sessions I played with cutting
steel, stainless steel, and aluminum. The aluminum cut like warm butter. All be
it I still had the amperage maxed out. The one piece of aluminum I had clamped
above the surface of some plate steel, just instantly became molten
and flowed out onto the ground. One could melt lead,
aluminum, gold and the like, for castings. I'm in need of some of the
latter for a eco friendly drop weight. ;})
Regards,
Brent |