{"id":33,"date":"2008-12-04T02:05:58","date_gmt":"2008-12-04T06:05:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/patpruitt.userblogs.ganoksin.coms\/2008\/12\/04\/plasma-arc-welding-project-one-earrings\/"},"modified":"2008-12-04T02:05:58","modified_gmt":"2008-12-04T06:05:58","slug":"plasma-arc-welding-project-one-earrings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/patpruitt\/2008\/12\/04\/plasma-arc-welding-project-one-earrings\/","title":{"rendered":"Plasma Arc Welding &#8211; Project One Earrings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"left\">Well here we go.\u00a0 First I want to thank <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.lindseyjewelers.com\">Kevin Lindsey<\/a> and the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.userblogs.ganoksin.com\">Orchid List<\/a>\u00a0for bringing TIG welding for jewelry to my attention.\u00a0 I had been thinking about tackling this venture for quite some time.\u00a0 After doing some research, I decided that <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Plasma_arc_welding\">Plasma Arc Welding<\/a> would be better suited for my needs.\u00a0 I got lucky and scored a Thermal Arc Ultima 150 for a fair price on ebay.\u00a0 After collecting the assorted missing items for the welder I was ready to try some stuff&#8230;.so here is the first project, welding two pieces of wire together to form an earring.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">The project starts with two 10ga pieces of stainless steel wire (0.102&#8243; dia), putting a curve in them, then grinding a flat angle for the two pieces to fit appropriately.\u00a0 Fittment is pretty critical, this is so we dont have to do a lot of filling with the welding aspect.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"400\" src=\"http:\/\/patpruitt.userblogs.ganoksin.coms\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/5eed4_PAWE01.jpg\" height=\"267\" style=\"width: 400px;height: 267px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Here is a shot on how the pieces fit together.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"400\" src=\"http:\/\/patpruitt.userblogs.ganoksin.coms\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/5eed4_PAWE02.jpg\" height=\"267\" style=\"width: 400px;height: 267px\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">\u00a0Now that we have a good fittment, its time to tack the pieces together.\u00a0 I used masking tape as my *clamp* for welding.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"400\" src=\"http:\/\/patpruitt.userblogs.ganoksin.coms\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/5eed4_PAWE03.jpg\" height=\"267\" style=\"width: 400px;height: 267px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>From here, I tried to just do a fusion weld (no filler rod) and get the two halves to weld together, mild success, but to make a better bond I brought in the filler rod (0.051&#8243; wire).\u00a0 The photos below show some of the welding on the project.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"400\" src=\"http:\/\/patpruitt.userblogs.ganoksin.coms\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/5eed4_PAWE04.jpg\" height=\"267\" style=\"width: 400px;height: 267px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"400\" src=\"http:\/\/patpruitt.userblogs.ganoksin.coms\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/5eed4_PAWE05.jpg\" height=\"267\" style=\"width: 400px;height: 267px\" \/><br \/>\na bit of file work on this one<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"400\" src=\"http:\/\/patpruitt.userblogs.ganoksin.coms\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/5eed4_PAWE06.jpg\" height=\"267\" style=\"width: 400px;height: 267px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>After some moderate filing work with both regular and needle files, you start to see the outcome of the project.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"400\" src=\"http:\/\/patpruitt.userblogs.ganoksin.coms\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/5eed4_PAWE07.jpg\" height=\"267\" style=\"width: 400px;height: 267px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Next hit it on the polishing machine.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"400\" src=\"http:\/\/patpruitt.userblogs.ganoksin.coms\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/5eed4_PAWE08.jpg\" height=\"267\" style=\"width: 400px;height: 267px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>There you go, a nicely welded joint that will withstand the abuse any ear will give it.\u00a0 Up until this point, the only options for creating such an attractive joint would have been to laser weld (which I dont have, nor afford), or to solder the two pieces together.\u00a0 The down side about silver soldering and stainless steel, is that you will always see the solder joint.<\/p>\n<p>Ill post a finished photo of the earrings down the road, all in all, I must say, Im really going to like this new welder and its capacities.\u00a0 In addition, there is a LOT of energy related to this type of welding, you can tell by the heat discoloration of the stainless.\u00a0 With only a fraction of time behind this machine, things can only get better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well here we go.\u00a0 First I want to thank Kevin Lindsey and the Orchid List\u00a0for bringing TIG welding for jewelry to my attention.\u00a0 I had been thinking about tackling this venture for quite some time.\u00a0 After doing some research, I decided that Plasma Arc Welding would be better suited for my needs.\u00a0 I got lucky [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,5,6,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/patpruitt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/patpruitt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/patpruitt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/patpruitt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/patpruitt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/patpruitt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/patpruitt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/patpruitt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/patpruitt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}