Scratch Build – Complete ⭐ Spirit of Motion

Looking good , I discovered these Tig welders on youtube yesterday and I want one now :
(Its near the end of video, cold welding, ie burst welding so the part doesnt heat up much)

 

Sheesh you're too kind. Thank you though! It's only going to get better

Cold welding is pretty sweet! Thanks for sharing the vid too. It was fun to watch the demos at the end

 

Before I continue welding I want the hinge and back plate to all be attached. I want to ideally weld the upper grills to the back plate with it attached to the main frame. This way there will not be the chance of misalignment of the grill to the frame once its is welded fully.

I picked up a pretty beefy hinge because it needs to be able to have some large screws hold the grill to the frame securely and squarely. The air spring is going to be in the ball park of about 80 pounds of force pushing the back plate so I want a nice sturdy hinge and screws.

The low profile piano hinge I bought was too long so I cut it down the 8" width I need and filed the ends square.

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I then closed the hinge and drilled my holes to fit a 10-32 screw (I should have used 10-24 as course threads are usually better in aluminum).

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I threw on a single flute, 82 degree countersink and simply drilled down until the head was below the top face. Rinse and repeat.

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Cleaned up the deformed steel on the back side of the countersinks with a deburring tool and the hinge was good to go!

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With my hinge made up I know its actual length. I now need to notch my frame to fit the hinge's width and thickness. I notch the hinge into the frame so that the hinge is out of the way of my grill welding and to add some strength against twisting/torsion from the air spring that is off center.

I threw the frame inside a CNC mill but was just manually jogging the tool like a manual mill. It was simply the only equipment available in the little machine shop that lets me use their stuff. Using a 1/4" endmill I cut out the slot.

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I drilled the holes in the frame and upper grill plate and then tapped the 10-32 threads by hand. I used the single flute countersink to chamfer the tops of the holes to fit the screws heads. When the screws are sitting in the hinge, the screw head's chamfer stick out below the hinge so I need my holes in the frame and upper plate to be countersunk to fit the rest of the head.

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I could finally test fit the hinge and it looks great! It closes a little past 90 degrees which is what I wanted. This means the grill will be able to fully rest on the frame and won't be held up by the hinge binding or not closing far enough.

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I will probably polish this hinge or paint it black later. I have not really decided yet which way I'm going. I am glad to have this fitting and working well though!

 

Quick update on wrapping up the back plate for the upper section of the grill. This is the piece that the upper grills are welded to and the air spring is mounted to.

I needed a shouldered slot for mounting the bracket so that I have a little bit of adjustability in terms of height. Quick layout, drill, full depth slot, and them the roughly half depth shoulder slot.

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I also had time to tackle welding the outside edges of the grill now that is was shaped to fit. I used a big chunk of aluminum to hold them down and lined each grill up one at a time to be flush on the outside. Align grill, weld, align grill, weld...

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The MDF spacers and tape got a bit toasty (caught fire a couple times) but held up really great and maintained my spacing for the welding.

It was going really great until the ends of each side. I used a small clamp to hold the steeply angled grills up against one another before welding. On the first side I tried I put just a little too much heat in the 1/4" aluminum strip and with the weight of the clamp hanging on it... it fell right off and onto the floor.

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Devastated by the horror of seeing my grill now in more pieces than it should be I sat there and took a break for a bit. After I psyched myself up, I put the clamp on the other side to keep it tight, and this time I attempted to weld it with less heat. Clanging metal rang out shortly after watching the piece fall from my helmet's small, tinted window haha

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I walked away, drank an ice tea, then returned. I REALLY took my time and slowly repaired the damage I had done. First putting tiny tacks on the pieces and then building it back up. With that fixed the lower section of the grill is completely welded.

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Soooo much eye candy! This much metal gives me wood... can i say that?


I tend to blow through my welds too.... turn the power down then spend the next 10 mins filling and building.....

It's all practice im really good at blowing thru now!

 

I'm really starting to get the hang of blowing thru! Well on my way to being an expert at it

 

So, When you started that fire... You tried to blow it out with the mask on, right? It's not just me that does that, right?
Great work, man. Like Def, I would have had a big pile of slag... or the welds would have popped loose after cooling.

 

Despite the absolute gale I produced inside my helmet a couple times, like a trick candle, the fire would stay burning! haha

Thank you. TIG welding is a skill that I am FAR from mastering but one I'm thankful to have the opportunity to practice from time to time

 

Upper grill welding can now happen!

I slotted each grill into the front spine and then grabbed some more MDF spacers to hold the back close to its final location. I placed a chunk of aluminum and brass on the top to hold it all down tight before I started welding.

These grills are all long and I will probably cut them off flush with the back plate when the shaping is all complete. We'll see how it looks.

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With the back of the plate welded I could lay the grill on its back and weld the inside of each.

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I then oriented the grill onto it's face so I could weld the inside of each grill to the spine.

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Now the grill is fully assembled! The work is far from over as I made the artistic choice when I started this project to shape the entire outside surface to match the contour of the spine. Hours of sanding, grinding, filing, buffing, poilishing, etc. are next.

I am excited for how it coming to life from those original render ideas. I'm learning so many ways I should not do things haha

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Just gorgeous, makes me want to build a Hot Rod Casemod

 

Superb!

Love the background too

 

You definitely should! There is a HUGE range of styles and themes you can do within a hot rod build.

 

That came out great. Your backdrop screams "Oklahoma hailstorm" though.

 

The background is the Threadripper version.

 

I feel attacked haha I don't have many backdrop options and I like the old Rabbit

Next level case modding for sure

 

I want the components of this system for my dad to be as awesome as the case, so I reached out to a few companies. I'm very thankful and excited that EVGA and NVIDIA stepped in to sponsor two amazing items that take this computer to another level!

EVGA provided a fully modular SuperNOVA G5 power supply.

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NVIDIA sent over a GeForce RTX 2080


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Huge thanks to the support from everyone here on the forums. You have all been incredibly nice and quick to build up fellow modders of all skill levels. Without this community these sponsors probably wouldn't be possible.

 

Amazing items for an amazing build

 

Congrats. You shouldn't have posted that beautiful slab of wood, though. You gotta Use some of that now.