This week I attached the antennae to the grasshopper as well as repairing one of the welds on my snowflake. Since I was ready to attach the antennae it didn't take long, the only challenging event that took place was making sure the antennae didn't fall off while attaching/welding.
After reviewing the welds on the snowflake I realized that all of them looked pretty dicey. I decided to go around and touch up all of the previously done welds. The problem that I ran into trying to reattach the broken piece of the snowflake was that, there wasn't much space to connect the two pieces. I made the decision to grind as much of the previously done weld as I could. Most of the previous weld wouldn't come off but I was sure there was enough room to connect the two. Sure enough in a couple brisk arm movements I had both pieces connect, stronger than last time.
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This week I wanted to put some finishing touches on the grasshopper, my plan was to put the eyes and cut some short length wires from a metal spring. I got the idea for the antennae from a long metal coil called a snake that is used to clean toilets. The coil has a very tight wrap which remotely resembles the antennae of a grasshopper. I got the idea for the eyes from a pair of bushings made for our dump-truck.
The process of attaching the eyes was considerably hard due to the fact that there is little space to hold them by. In one attempt I accidentally welded the pliers use to hold the eyes, to the eyes. I eventually was able to find a good angle for both eyes and attach them to the intended position. This week my goal was to attach all four of my bent screws (legs) to the body of my grasshopper. I was all prepped and ready to attach the legs, when I tried to attach the legs I couldn't get proper connection. I wasn't sure if the large amount of rust on the wrench would prohibit welding on the wrench or not. I got a metal grinder and grinned a majority of the rust off. I was now able to attach the legs on.
Throughout the process of welding the legs on I got better at welding from different angles, for some I had to weld under the grasshopper. Due to there being some ridges and bumps on the grasshopper the legs weren't lying flat. This required my mentor to hold the leg in place while I was welding. The heat was able to easily flow through the metal making it warm, even with gloves on. This week Evyn told me that he had already fixed his trailer, which was my end goal. I realized that I would have to find a new project to work on in my last few weeks of Genius Hour. I researched many cool projects on the internet and decided on welding together a grasshopper. I had many of the essential parts already. I was going to use a monkey wrench for the body and the handle for the abdomen. I used a massive spring for the rear legs.
I realized that grasshoppers have six legs which required me to make four more. I got some elongated steel screws. I put the screws on a vice and used a pipe to increase leverage to bend the screws. I had trouble bending the screws but slowly made progress. I had to get a triangle to measure the angles to be roughly the same. I repeated this process four times. This week I was at my house trying to design a new project idea. I had done the snowflake, and was now out of ideas. I was sitting at my work bench, drawling random shapes out of pieces of metal, and decided to call Evyn. He encouraged me to look for broken pieces of metal lying around my house that could use welding. I went to a spot where my family had been storing scraps of metal and found two decently sized pieces of metal. The pieces I found were relatively thin which I found could be a problem.
Since the metal was thin I had to research the proper heat level and feeding speed of the wire. The website I prefer to use is the Miller Weld Setting Calculator. This website allows me to put in the materials thickness and get the welding settings out. I measured the thickness to be approximately 3/8 of an inch. My wire size was already correct, I just needed to have my wire speed between the range of 210-230 ipm and my voltage between 20-21 volts. After getting the specifications right I had to clean the metal off so I could have a clean conductor and no porosity. I cleaned the metal by using a grinder, This process is not that hard but very time consuming to make sure the weld is clean. This week I went and got nails to do my project. I got the nails and a nut to put in the center of the structure. After obtaining the nails and nut I was able to make a layout of the snowflake. I realized early on that my snowflake was going to be to small to fit my standards of a snowflake. I came up with the idea to tack weld two more nails onto each of the 6 current nails.
Tack welding allowed me to attach three of my nails together with a simple arm movement. This process got me a little frustrated because occasionally I would miss chaining a nail and have to get a new one. After tacking 3 groups of nails I was pretty comfortable and fluent. Once I finished the 6 tack welds I checked their strength. If I found them to be to weak I would reinforce them by going back over for another run. After the reinforcing stage was done I had my finished product, which resembles a snowflake This week Evyn and I did another T-Joint but also started planning on something new. After completing the T-Joint we began to talk about what I could do for my first welding project. I told Evyn that I wanted to do something with a rustic feel. We concluded that the project should be made out of something with everyday items. I was very confused on what the project should be made out of and drew many sketches.
I finally came up with the idea of making a snowflake out of nails. To my astonishment Evyn sounded very amused by the idea of creating a snowflake out of nails. The biggest challenge he said we'd run into would be holding nails in a fixed position. I found some steel nails in my dad's shop that I'd be able to use. I look forward to the challenge ahead. This week Evyn and I met up so I could practice on welding a t-joint. I began by equipping the safety equipment. Secondly I set the welder to the specific settings necessary for welding on carbon steel. Knowing in my past few runs that I had been going a little fast, I tried slowing down to find a good pace to maintain. I was getting better at making the pattern look smooth and orderly, my previous attempts were crooked and uneven. I was able to go through the t-joint with making few errors.
Evyn and I finished early and were able to talk about what type of weld I would be able to do next week. Evyn had gotten some metal that already had a pre-made bevel which would allow me to try a new type of mig weld. We then worked out a time to where we could both meet the next week. I left very excited for the next week to try a new weld. This week I welded another T-Joint and practiced my triple bead. I started off by setting the wire speed to 40 and setting the voltage to 3. My mentor showed me how to turn the gas on by twisting the knob at the top of the tank. Since we were doing another T-Joint I was able to use past knowledge of how to link the two pieces of metal together. I learned that when manipulating the metal it's important to go at a constant speed and not pull away from the metal. The proper way when welding is to go back into your orange pool that follows after you weld.
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