magpie-man

Yep. Production environment, with plenty of hours spent welding once every thing is set up. That's why I don't mind spending decent money on a welding system that will speed things up, as well as making welding stainless as safe as possible. The pest traps are constructed from square welded mesh with 2mm wire and 25mm x 25mm pitch. Some of the welding involves "stitching" the mesh together. Other parts of the trap have 0.8mm flat sheet components welded to the mesh. The frames of the trap, doors, and trigger mechanisms use 6mm and 4.8mm rod. A lot of components, with welds often taking less than one second each. It's also fine work, so accurate torch placement is critical. I'll put up photos of the welder setup once I've worked out how.

I could run stainless wire through my existing MIG welder, but for a number of reasons I would prefer to switch to TIG. I already use a Vortex filtered air feed to a Miller helmet. It's an excellent system. Quite apart from the filtered air, the cool air flow makes it much more pleasant welding in summer, although the downside is getting your face frozen off in the middle of winter. You get used to it. The Vortex / Miller combo costs the raw end of $1200, but once you've used it for a while it's worth every penny. However it does have a couple of issues. One problem is the loudness of the fan noise travelling up the pipe into the helmet. I finally solved it (after various experiments) by cutting into the pipe and inserting a 1 litre plastic milk container. It doesn't need any internal baffling, and does a great job of soaking up the fan noise. The other problem is that the Vortex blower runs diagnostics while it's running, with an audible buzzer beeping away seemingly at random, and an internal vibrator going off (like a mobile phone, but more intense). Finally got sick of it and snipped the wires to the vibrator. The other good thing about the Miller helmet is the X-Mode setting. The helmet picks up the electromagnetic feed when the torch ignites the weld arc. X-Mode is intend for exterior use outside, where UV from the sun will otherwise trigger the helmet. However the X-Mode setting tends to trigger bit earlier when MIG welding inside, and also turns off the shading a bit more quickly. It's the standard setting I use now. Again, one of those things you won't want to be without once you have used it. Rather than deal with chrome fumes solely by using the filtered helmet, I would prefer to limit the fumes at source as much as possible. I'll be installing some sort of air removal & filtration system at some stage, but reducing the fumes at source will reduce what's needed in terms of air flow and filtration. I'd like to put up a photo of my helmet setup. How do I go about that? Can't seem to find anything in the edit menu.

Yep. There are two faults to be found. 1. The lack of earthing. 2. The leakage from the live phase. You need to find and fix both of them.

I fitted a Fuelmiser O2 sensor from Repco. Much cheaper than a Toyota OEM. The only problem with it was it not including colour codes for the wires in the box. Seemed to do the trick once grafted onto the Toyota plug. One note: do not solder the wires as this can generate thermocouple voltages (I am lead to believe).

Your earth isn't working if you are getting shocks. Unplug the drill press right away and pull it apart to check for faults. Lethal stuff 240 volts.

The AA1car.com website has plenty of information on how engine sensors work and how to diagnose faults: http://www.aa1car.com/library/o2sensor.htm If you scroll down to the bottom of that page you'll find some related pages on O2 sensors. I had similar problems with high fuel consumption with a 3SFE Toyota engine following a blown head gasket. Leaking glycol can poison the O2 sensor. The sensors can also give up the ghost with old age. To test the sensor you need to place a multi-meter on the sensor outputs and watch the voltage output while the engine is running (and the sensor has reached full operating temperature). If the sensor and engine computer are working properly the voltage should hover around 0.5 volts. O2 sensors come either as 2 wire or 4 wire. The 4 wire version have a heating circuit to keep the sensor hot. You have to work out which wires are which. The location of the sensor shouldn't matter. If all your fuel injectors are delivering the same amount of fuel, the air fuel ratio which the sensor is detecting from only one pair of cylinders will be the same as the other cylinders. However if one of the fuel injectors is partially blocked (running lean) the other injectors will deliver a richer mix to bring the overall air fuel ratio to the "correct" ratio. So testing and cleaning the fuel injectors could be worthwhile. Also check the connections and wiring to the injectors is OK. With a poor connection one of the injectors may not be opening a closing correctly. KPR's post could be on the right track with the water temp sensor. If this is faulty the engine computer may think the engine is running colder than it actually is, and deliver a rich air fuel ratio. The aa1car website has a good page of water temp sensors. It's easy to test by checking the resistance across the sensor with a multimeter. Hope this helps.

The TiP TiG system is what alerted me to Tig wire feeding. There are two ways to go: First. Hot wire feeding, where current is feed through the incoming wire to preheat it before it hits the weld pool (created by the Tig arc). This stops the wire cooling the weld pool and increases potential weld speeds. Tip Tig is a hot wire system and adds an extra wrinkle by moving the incoming wire back and forth to agitate the weld pool and spread out the weld fillet. Second. Cold wire feeding, where the wire is fed in cold, using a feeder very similar to a Mig wire feeder. There are extra settings with a delay after Tig arc ignition before the wire starts feeding, and automatic retraction of the wire when the weld is finished. The cold wire feeders also often have pulse settings, to behave similar to hand feeding the wire. Big advantages of wire feeding is leaving one hand free to steady the torch, and an increase in welding speed – up to Mig welding rates. CK Worldwire make these cold wire feeder units: http://www.ckworldwide.com/coldwire.htm Pretty pricey however. The torch end of cold wire feeder can be mounted on the torch, or hand-held as a pendant feeder: http://www.ckworldwide.com/coldwire_hand.htm

I'm presently building pest control cage traps, using a Mig welder to weld the mesh and other components. I've found an affordable source good quality of stainless steel mesh in China, and am seriously considering shifting to full stainless steel construction for my traps. I'll shift to Tig welding for safety reasons, as the chromium fumes from Tig are much less than Mig. In order to keep my welding speed up I want to use an automatic cold wire feeder with the Tig welder. Wire feeders are a fairly rare species. Has anyone had experience with them? I'm also looking for a good quality Tig welder.