Day 5: Sanding

Mondays are horrible. Today was quite an experience. I spent literally almost the entire day sanding the twelve lids we cut. Who would of though that sanding can take so long, but picture twelve 1/4" inch thick steel plates that are 21" inches in diameter getting sanded by hand and you can imagine how tedious it can be. I had to sand the edges on both sides of each plate as well as outside of the lids to make sure that it is continuously smooth all around with no rough edges. This is very important because if the edges are not sanded it is extremely dangerous and can easily cut your hand. Each lid took about ten minutes because as we all know sanding steel is not as smooth as cutting butter, it can take some time. By the time I was done I could not hold my hand steady because the power sander literally vibrates like its going through a seizure or something. It was one of the weirdest after effects I ever experienced from using a power tool by far.

Day 4: Ninja Stars and More Plasma Cutting

Thank God It's Friday! Today was very much like yesterday, didn't do too many interesting things except continue on cutting 1/4 " inch steel circular lids for the copper wire drums. We finally finished cutting the twelve lids and in the process I was able to salvage some ninja stars from the left over scrap metal. I will have pictures up as soon as I find an adapter to upload them. In between finishing cutting the lids, I helped assemble one of the smaller boom manipulators. It was quite interesting to see how a twenty foot machine was assembled and put together. So far I am estimating that it will take about at least a week to finish the assembly process due to numerous complicated chain and motor systems. The vertical beam that holds up the manipulator is close to 1000 pounds, making it very tricky to erect, however with the help of a fork-lift and some thick rope we were able to lift it up. Who would of knew forklifts can lift pretty high.

Day 3: Fork Lifts, Plasma Welds, and Band Saws

Today I officially began my internship at Arcmatic. When I arrived, Bill my boss briefly explained to me what was going on the in steel/welding industry and how Arcmatic's work was related. Basically he deals with improving the current welding methods in the industry, which apparently is not so efficient. The dual carriage and the boom manipulator gantry can speed up the welding process tremendously. Traditionally it takes 3 hours to weld a 20 ft steel column by hand but with Arcmatic's welding equipment it can be done in less than half an hour! I will be familiarized with how these machines operate as my internship goes on, which I will try to explain when I get to that point. So what I did today was basically learn how to use a plasma welding tool, which is pictured above. The plasma welding process is really neat because you can contain the heat relatively well while still achieving precise welds. I used the plasma method to cut through quarter inch steel plates to make circular lids that were needed or some containers. I also learned how to drive a forklift! Forklifts are fairly easy, its basically like driving a go-cart except you have two super long forks sticking out that you gotta be careful with. The band saw was very interesting to work with. Its a huge saw machine that cuts through heavy steel and other solid materials. The band saw is tricky because you have to remember to let the liquid run first before you start the blade. Basically because it cuts heavy duty materials there is a continuous stream of liquid lubrication that drips over the saw during the sawing process, so before you start cutting you have to make sure the stream of lubrication starts running first.

Day 2: Boom Testing

George, who is my supervisor by the way, and I finally finished assembling the boom manipulator. He blew out the welding torch yesterday (see above) so we had to wait till today get replace it. When we were welding, the clamp to hold the torch in place wasn't fastened tight enough so it fell onto the plate and got melted . Basically what we did today was finish up the assembling process and tested some welds. We welded two flat steel plates onto the I-beams to make a box column. In the picture above you can see a general idea of how an I-beam looks like before its welded and after welding it looks like the box shaped beam next to it, except the box beam in the picture is missing the plate in the middle (I couldn't take pictures of what we did so I found pictures online that most resembled the work we did today). It was quite interesting watching the welding process, it takes about 33 Volts to melt the metal wires needed for the welds. The temperature needed to melt the metal wires is about 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, with the AC/DC currents running it takes no more than two seconds for the machine to reach this temperature so its a pretty interesting phenomenon. At one point it was so hot that it melted through the top plate of the I-beam because we were moving too fast with the machine; sparks were flying and I thought George got hit, it was quite intense!

Day 1: Boom Manipulator Welding System

Today began my internship at this company called Arcmatic Welding Systems. They're a small company which is located in the San Francisco area that specializes in making welding systems, as you can tell by their name. Basically Arcmatic was founded by a gentleman named William L Bong who has been perfecting the VertaSlag®  and the HD-SubArc+MP® Welding Methods since 1973; his company focuses on developing welding systems that drastically improve the efficiency of the welding process.

The machine above is called a " boom manipulator welding system ". I'm not too familiar with the technical details of how it works but from what I observed it uses the AC/DC currents to melt copper wires onto steel plates which forms a weld. The copper wires are held in the two white bins on the back of the machine, they run from the back to the front through the blue tubes which are suspended by a pulley system to ensure that they are aligned. There's a little black box above the vertical orange tubes in the front of the machine that deposits the flux onto the molten copper during the weld to ensure that no oxygen enters the weld. I'm fairly new to this line of work so to get a better picture of how this machine actually works heres a link:

http://arcmatic.com/index.php?option=com_seyret&Itemid=97&task=videodirectlink&id=7