Burning track guide for steel plate.

[ieezitin]

Hi guys.

I work for a billion dollar company that has a $20 tool spending budget per annum, yet they want their job done right yet! They will not buy tools.  The apprentice welder I work with has no clue how to cut thick plate straight for our patching we have to do for the stone crushers, he keeps sending me up 1” thick plate that looks like a blind one eyed beaver just hacked through it so to remedy this I made today a plate guide for burning plate, it also has a handy feature of allowing you to put an angle on for making bevel cuts.















Took me two hours by rummaging in the scrap box and using stuff that’s not in service, they were an old lump of brass that was a drop from a previous job, an old scribe block swivel, a little aluminium block I found on the floor by the milling machine, a track arm I got from an auction in fact I have about 80 left in the box and the stainless slide bar that came from an old printer I grabbed from the recycle bin at the grocery store.

Now I have to show the nit-wit how to run it.   God bless    Anthony.

[Brass_Machine]

Nice job and creative solution... here is hoping the apprentice figures it out and uses it right!

Eric

[Rob.Wilson]

NICE ONE 


Your place of work sounds just like mine ,, No way will they buy gear to do the job ,

Rob

[mardtrp]

Neat idea, reckon I'll have to make for work now, but, what about them plastic wheels.

That flame throwing gas axe, sure creates some real heat, round about where them wheels used to be.
 




Mark

[Bernd]

Anthony,

Nice Modding job of parts found in the scrap bin.

Sounds like you need to start your own billion dollar industry.

Bernd

[matthew_g]

Neat idea, reckon I'll have to make for work now, but, what about them plastic wheels.

That flame throwing gas axe, sure creates some real heat, round about where them wheels used to be.
 




Mark

Real nice job you have done there, But I have to agree with Mark, How do you plan to counteract the heat and the plastic/rubber wheels?
Matt

[ieezitin]

First off my apologies to mark in not getting back to your original question.

Matt   now I can answer for both.
First off the plastic wheels was not a problem to heat because the torch tip and plate being cut in front of the carriage would and should not heat up to a high temp, in a perfect world once the cutting has commenced there should be only residual heat left over on the immediate surface area. 

Overall this little gismo was a failure and needed major surgery, the four wheel design just played havoc with steering and trying to keep it on a straight edge was near on impossible, the beam spanning from the center to the end holding the torch was to flimsy, it wanted to twist as the grip from the ali block was not sufficient enough. In the end I chopped off the wheels and tig welded two back on then I took  ½ dia stainless steel instrumentation tubing, drilled a new hole in the block and affixed it to the torch end, it worked great after that.

Ironically my boss just loved the little thing and had the nuts to ask me to make one more for another quarry that we own, it was instantaneous the word B****cks fell out of my mouth and I concluded my sentence by telling him to go buy one the cheap B*****rd.

Happy days!!!!!       Anthony.

[bigmini]

First off my apologies to mark in not getting back to your original question.

Matt   now I can answer for both.
First off the plastic wheels was not a problem to heat because the torch tip and plate being cut in front of the carriage would and should not heat up to a high temp, in a perfect world once the cutting has commenced there should be only residual heat left over on the immediate surface area. 

Overall this little gismo was a failure and needed major surgery, the four wheel design just played havoc with steering and trying to keep it on a straight edge was near on impossible, the beam spanning from the center to the end holding the torch was to flimsy, it wanted to twist as the grip from the ali block was not sufficient enough. In the end I chopped off the wheels and tig welded two back on then I took  ½ dia stainless steel instrumentation tubing, drilled a new hole in the block and affixed it to the torch end, it worked great after that.

Ironically my boss just loved the little thing and had the nuts to ask me to make one more for another quarry that we own, it was instantaneous the word B****cks fell out of my mouth and I concluded my sentence by telling him to go buy one the cheap B*****rd.

Happy days!!!!!       Anthony.

Heh. Your time sheet this week: "Making tools the boss was too cheap to buy: X hours"

It probably cost him more for your time to make the thing from scratch than it would have cost him to buy one in the first place.