During the course of this week, the presentations were proceeding and I also gave my shot at welding to help the team make the bases by welding the hot rolled steel flat bar with the steel square tubing. After the material was previously prepped, the team came across some issues due to the thinness of the steel square tubing. We ended up burning a hole through with the first try of the hot rolled steel flat bar, which is bad since we are planning on filling the bases with concrete so any holes would allow the concrete to seep in, which is undesirable. In order to get this task completed, I ended up taking charge and focusing on manning the welder while the other team members were left in charge to complete some of the aluminum manufacturing. I ended up completing about 20 welds with the square tubing and hot rolled steel flat bar, which resulted in 4 completed pieces. I feel like we are starting to hit our stride and hopefully with this kind of work ethic, we are able to stay ahead of our planned schedule, so we have more room for troubleshooting.
On Monday, the team met up and needed to address some of the issues that we had with the welder. Kevin was in constant communication with administration and Dan (from full-scale bogey) to ensure we were taking the correct course of action. Kevin and I took a trip to Praxair to retrieve a new tank of Argon for the remaining welds. After coming back and setting up the welder, I started and finished the welds necessary for the support structures. I encountered some issues during this process as I never found the correct way to properly weld these two components together due to the differences in thickness of the square tubing and the sheet metal. If I utilize too high of a current, the sheet metal would have a hole burnt through. However, if the current was too low, there would be no penetration of the square tubing. Even after completing 80 welds, this process was not mastered and still need to be cleaned up through other methods that will be looked into.
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