Tag: stainless

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Love in the time of cholera

Don’t know about you, but I think the penguin looks worried.

In these strangest of times, I hope that you are all well.

I’m not sure where to begin really. Writing about small goings on in my tiny corner of the vast tableau of human experience seems rather pointless given what the whole of humanity is currently enduring. But in the hope that some may find these musings mildly amusing and possibly a welcome diversion from the cataclysmic car crash of out there, we humbly soldier on.

I took delivery last autumn of the bulk of the sheet metal work from a new Canadian supplier. Since then, the stainless steel covers have been sitting on the shelf waiting for the completion of the frames so that all the parts that need to be painted can go to the shop at the same time. As those of you who follow the posts on that photo site owned by the social media company with the reputation for (among other things) being extremely cavalier about their users’ privacy will know, the frames were finished some time ago. So now it’s time to put the finishing touches on the covers. A long, long time ago, (you know, in 2020BC) I discovered that the straight folds on two front flanges of the cover didn’t have quite enough relief on the interior flanges (gasp) to allow the requisite over-bend during fabrication. The upshot of this is that the front panels are only nearly, not exactly, at 90 degrees to the sides (re-gasp). Always seeking to shave off another minute source of imperfection, adding a tab that connects the front flanges to the sides will resolve this and have the additional benefit of increasing the overall stiffness.

This of course requires a new tool. One strangely reminiscent of an earwig.

As always, you get what you pay for and this thing is neither terribly expensive nor terribly good. But it will do (some of) the job. As the following test shows, it can produce a mechanically sound, if slightly less than perfect, spot weld.

Bunch o’ tabs cut from some scrap stainless.

A tab spot-welded into place.

BUT… without radical modification, the spot welder can’t be positioned to make the second weld on the front flange. So, it’s back to the old fashioned (i.e. long and slow) way – TIG welding by hand – with a simple jig to get things all orthogonal-like.

Welding thin material is really easy to get wrong. We managed to pull these off without blowing any holes (or at least ones that I will show you pictures of).

Rinse, repeat:

Drive to nearest big-box store for, well, boxes so that they can be shipped to the painters :D

… hmmm, wonder how they turn out.

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Very fine

August is very fine. People take holidays. In France and other places in Europe where the sun shines more than occasionally, things start slowing down in July and people “faire le pont” until sometime in late September when they finally remember they had a job. Trying to do anything other than sitting by the pool and taking four hours for lunch (i.e. an hour longer than usual) in August in Italy just isn’t worth attempting. Here in Montreal we are more organized; we like to do things together: along with Moving Day, July 1st, when everyone moves at the same time (Which is insane. Try to find moving truck on that day. I’m not making this up.) we also, as anyone who lives here can attest, tear up all of our roads and rebuild all our overpasses and bridges at the same time. It is more efficient to wait fifty years and then get it all done in one go, ripping-off-the-band-aid-style. Economies of scale you know. We also have this thing called the The Construction Holiday. Towards the end of July, once we are done ripping up the asphalt and putting out the traffic cones, we all go on our government mandated holiday for exactly two weeks. On the same day. We also all come home at the same time. Over the interchanges that we are rebuilding and along the roads we tore up before we all went on holiday. Sensible I call it.

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Welding the boiler together is a complicated set of procedures. Each type of weld requires a different setup and either a judicious application of inert welding gas, a custom heat-sink or both. Some operations render others either difficult, or in some cases impossible, so it is critical to get the assembly order right. To further complicate matters, each weld introduces some distortion in the parts: more or less depending on their geometry and the amount of heat that goes into the weld.

The HX tubes are easy. The size and fit of the parts makes for a simple weld that is almost invisible.

Ditto (once the heat-sink is made) for the bolt ring.

Just load your nine-shooter and fire away!

All the bolt rings were welded up in about an hour.

Fitting the HX tube in place requires a more complicated setup as both the inside of the boiler and the HX tube have to be purged with inert gas during the weld.

The group mounting flange and brew reservoir meet for the first time.

The end flanges are also done using the turntable (a.k.a. the Ouroboros machine).

A few welds later and after some clean-up: the first full-stainless diagonal heat-exchange boiler off the production line.

This one is now ready for a few tests before the rest are assembled. Mistakes at this point would be, ermm, disappointing.

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1 – MONTREAL, QUE.: AUGUST 21, 2014 — Construction cones line Rene Levesque Blvd east of Atwater Street in Montreal, on Thursday, August 21, 2014. (Dave Sidaway / THE GAZETTE) Web 4×3 ORG XMIT: POS1410031753473482