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The Official WELDING and FABRICATION Thread

20K views 99 replies 19 participants last post by  mike-tracy 
#1 · (Edited)
Good afternoon fellow RS25 initiates. After a bit of browsing I could not locate a comprehensive guide to fabrication and welding and I think it could be a valuable resource to the community if we had access to one. I have been looking to start this thread for a while to serve as a melting pot of information for those that are trying to dive deeper into the DIY side of things. Have you ever wondered what it takes to build your own turbo kit from scratch? Or maybe how all the guys on Weldporn lay down rainbow colored dimes? Well you have certainly come to the right place!


I find welding and fabrication to be one of the more intimidating aspects of building a car and I am a fabricator by trade. Most people would rather farm the work out to a professional or their cousin's buddie's uncle that lives on the corner. The goal of this thread is to provide those that may want to tackle a welding and fabrication oriented job with either information pertinent to there chosen task or at least a nudge in the right direction from someone that has already done it. Let us move on to why you actually clicked on this thread, shall we?

We'll start with the veggies ( ya, ya, ya, I know rules suck)

- Absolutely NO SOLICITATIONS! This isn't Times Square, no one wants your shitty mixtape. If you have questions regarding where or who can do work for you, contact them outside of the site


- No Bashing of work regardless of quality. You were not born a fabricator we all had to start somewhere. We are trying to encourage quality work, not discourage those who need more practice.


Easy right? Now what we are looking for:

-Any and all questions about Fabricating/welding

-Preferred tools and equipment

-New techniques or ideas

-Metallurgy

-And the most important, Pictures of your work.


Now if you have read this far you can listen to my last spiel. I am by no means a good among fabricators but will answer any questions within my realm of knowledge or refer you to someone or something that might know better. I am encouraging other DIY'ers and other fabricators to chime in as well, there are too many of you to name so pop in and say hello or answer a few questions. One last thing before moving onto the pretty pictures. I intend to do a featured write up once a month on a specific topic preferably one the majority would like to learn about. This could range from how to armor a clutch fork to which welding rod should I use for cast Iron. I would like to incorporate members work in this so start posting your work!

Here's a few of things I have had the pleasure of doing:

A snippet of the welds on my intercooler



My cold side pre-welding




And a few of the hotside






That is all for now. I will post more when they become pertinent or for a featured post. The first of the month is 3 days away, what would you guys like to see in the first featured post?
 
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#73 ·
January 2019: Introduction to Fusion 360 and aluminum fabrication

Disclaimer: I hold no responsibility to your personal safety. Fabrication and welding often requires heat, flames, and other things that can harm you if not properly equipped or prepared. Keep a fire extinguisher handy at all times because if you haven’t set something on fire it is only a matter of time. Fabricate at your own risk

This project took a bit longer to design as I'm still learning as a I go but better late than never right?

This month's project features a bit CAD as well as some aluminum fabrication. As some of may of seen a few of us on here are utilizing Fusion 360, an offshoot of Autodesk Inventor, to make some of our projects. The program is relatively user friendly, has a huge online database for help, and the best feature in my book, is the ability to get it for free as a "student". It's as simple as adding ".edu " in your login information, and fibbing on a few of the questions and bingo bango you have yourself 3D capable design software.

While more advanced users might go straight to the sketch feature on the program I still like to have a drawing on paper to reference for base dimensions. Pictured also are the preliminary sketches in finalized "drawing" form. I removed the dimensions as I was only printing the drawings to trace and not layout again.





After creating the two separate sketches in 2D I combined them in the program to ensure the 2 pieces would line up once they were cut. Once you have both sketches on the same workspace its relatively easy to extrude them to your desired thickness in my case .125".





The program makes it very easy to lay the drawings out so they are easy to trace. Be careful when doing it though, my program defaults to half-scale so I printed my design twice.



I tape my papers to the work piece to make it easy to center punch multiple holes. A nifty little feature in the program lets you mark centerlines of any holes and even any arcs or curves with a linear radius.

I hate cutting out aluminum but thankfully these were small enough to cut on the shear. I drilled all the holes prior to cutting the pieces so I didn't have to cut the arcs.



Look and behold as the magic of computer laid holes allow the pieces to line up precisely.





I purposely left out what I was making in the beginning in hopes of making you read through and not looking at just the pictures so for the readers I thank you and for the viewers I hope you learned as much as you could. It is a simple bracket for holding my blow off valve pressure lines to the charge pipe in hopes of keeping it off the accessory belt.

This is how they look currently



And the intended goal for the bracket





Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk
 
#75 ·
Thanks haha. It wouldn't work as a single piece, the fittings are all push lock so they are a pita to undo, so I figured it would be better as two pieces. It's also good practice to join two seperate drawings in Fusion.

Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk
 
#77 ·
Did a small side project for my RS. The fuse panel sits right where the passenger airbag was so I figured a cover would be appropriate and keep the largest portion of wiring hidden and tidy.

I started with a model in fusion. The sheet metal workspace makes sheet metal bending and cutting a breeze. Since I unfortunately do not have a industrial sized printer and it was Sunday that I started (Staples was closed, I am impatient) , I was limited to 8.5×11 so I needed all the corresponding dimensions.



With a the dimensions laid out I transferred it to 1:1 on to another sheet. It takes a lot more attention to detail to lay it out on paper with dimensions as it only takes a few times of drawing your line on the wrong side of the ruler to have the whole thing skewed my a 1/16th or more. I have done it a few times now to know to keep a mechanical pencil handy and to use the same ruler throughout the entire layout. You may still be off by a hair or too but the semantics can be altered once the piece is in sheet metal.



The hard part is done now it was as easy as tracing it out onto aluminum and cutting it out. Now since I wanted the piece to be 3D without having to weld 5 separate pieces I added bends into the drawing. There are a few different ways to bend sheet metal and since the likelihood of you guys having access to a finger brake is slim I chose to do it with a homeade press brake. Since my bends were a round number at 90 degrees I could better get away with this. If the bend required is say, 37 degrees, you will be less than fortunate. A press brake is simple, you have a die, a sheet of metal and then your radius die. The bottom die pictured below is a piece of angle iron welded to another piece of angle iron to allow it to stand by itself.



The idea is to press your sheet into the lower die using a die who's radius is the same as the bend you desire. I modeled the drawing with a .125" radius so I could utilize a simple piece of quarter inch flat stock as my upper radius die. I rounded the ended slightly on the upper die to prevent any unwanted gouging in the bend. The sheet is placed atop the die with your bend line centered in relation to both dies. Slowly press your sheet into the lower die using the aforementioned press , adjusting the sheet to center if need be. If you play your cards right it forms a uniform radius bend without having to relief cut or any of that nonsense.





When I finished the cover I quickly realized it looked pretty bland. Maybe some labels, nah. A few stickers, negative too gawdy. A personalized logo, now we are talking. Some of you may have seen my "Factory Fabrication" stickers floating around in my journal as that is what I masquerade as for any sidework I take on. A few doodles later I whipped up this:



Twin stylized F's for you guessed it, Factory fabrication. As much as I like hand drawings it was easier to pop the drawing into Fusion to make sure it was perfectly symmetrical and give me nice drill and cut lines.



I don't have a plasma table to I cut out the logo with a hand shear and then filed all the remaining material.



Which I then welded onto the cover, drilled the holes and mounted it so together. I don't like how the center weld looks so I think I am going to leave the center slot open next time.



Questions, comments, critiques are always welcome. I hadn't touched a TIG in nearly a month before this project so I wasn't entirely displeased with my welds but there's always improvement to be made.

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#82 ·
I have considered it, one of our customers is a patent lawyer so it wouldn't be that difficult I think.

On the other hand, I still don't have a product to mass produce/sell yet so the idea of starting a business is not currently in the forefront of my thoughts.
 
#83 · (Edited)
Heres that under guard i made

Mocked up the under guard, going to cut it tomorrow and try to bend it in a siding brake so i hope its thin enough. Ill try the lift arm dimple die too. FYI a 4' by 3' sheet fits wheel to wheel, rad support to cross member with a little extra.





So i tried the lift arm method, wasnt enough weight so i stood on it. That wasnt enough weight, so i threw all the heavy things in the garage on top. That wasnt enough, so i decided just to lower the whole car onto it, which worked like a charm.

Trimmed some corners a bit, bent the sides and front up, all thats left is some rivnuts for the rad support and a few dimple dies around the thing and its just about done.











Theres about 5-6mm of gap from the pan, a little more at the crossmember. Should be enough space to keep it from rattling if it vibrates a bit.



I finished up the guard last night, it'd be really cool to have one water/laser cut for clean edges as this looks ok but not having even edges/corners bothers me. I threw a STI sticker on it to distract from one of the bends not being even. It works and doesnt rattle.

 
#89 ·
interesting reads so far. I have a few welders that I inherited from my father in law. Don’t know anything about them but he used them for commercial stuff and also for welding farm equipment. He was a professional contractor but not a professional welder.
Will keep an eye on this thread and all your guys’ nice work.
 
#90 ·
Post up some pictures of your equipment if you want! Someone in here can likely shed some light on what you have to work with.

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#91 ·
Ted, I know one is a Merlin 75 stick welder. One is a old Lincoln WeldandPower arc welder with generator built in. 190amp?

theres a third one too, that’s buried. Not sure what it is.
I’m whatever you would call a pre beginner. I have a lot of YouTube videos and tutorials and safety videos to watch/read
 
#92 ·
By the sounds you are working with some oldschool equipment. While you probably won't be doing precise sheet metal work with it I am sure it would come in handy. I did my first license plate bracket relocation with a 80s era tombstone!

Welding tips and tricks podcast by Jody Collier on Youtube is hands-down my favorite source of welding tips and tricks.
 
#94 ·
Still lacking a toy of my own I have been helping a few people out with fab work on there own vehicles. Sorry in advance for the picture quality, tapatalk no longer allows original sizing without a VIP membership.

I did this bandsaw jig for a fellow fabricator (thanks to Equinox92 for handling the printing)





Finished all the fab work on a car I restored at work.





And I have been developing a low profile filter housing for BW S475 housings





Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk
 
#96 ·
I don't know how this thread is suppose to help us weekend wrenchers get more confidence in doing our own Fab work....

This stuff is too beautiful! but since many of you "claim" to just learned from watching vids and doing it yourself, do you guys have any links good start off vids, like first steps, basics of voltage and how not to hurt yourself... I mean seriously, I have never welded ever before... I think I tacted my uppipe once at a friends house 12 years ago...

I mean common, one of you has an Autocad plasma cutter... ?
 
#98 ·
Thjanks, been binge watching and also found 6061.com guy.... f n amazing... but it really seems like take a lot of years and significant individual talent...

Also is it rude to ask some on this thread for their templates... that underguard sure would make a great starting project for someone like me .. hint hint @Bansheeboy11 ... ?
 
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