John's Alu Profile build

[Evengravy]

So, Friday I managed to get some new laser cut steel through the post from a crowd in the UK.

These parts will replace the current steel brackets which connect gantry on both sides to the ball nut holders. I used this as an opportunity to try welding for the first time. Please don't hammer me on the welding, I know it's shocking but this was my fist go at it and I've learnt a few things. One my 100A mig isn't nearly powerful enough for material this thick and, two; buying cheap gasless flux cored wire is a big mistake. If anyone is interested the Super 6 flux cored mig wire is something to avoid for a beginner at least. It creates plumes of black smoke, spatters like crazy (yep polarity is correct) and doesn't pool up very-well. If were to run the MIG again, I'd probably look to get some lincoln gasless flux cored wire, it seems to be well reviewed. Seems a bit pointless for this project, in future I'll be sticking to trying to learn a bit of ARC welding as I'm mostly interesting in sticking thick pieces metal together.

Essentially I've built two of these and each is just tacked at this point and I intend to grind this mess back and get up to speed with the arc and come back to it. It does seem to be fairly strong though. Importantly it is square and key surfaces are flat so it a definite improvement on the last version a local company made, which were neither flat nor square (but welded better for sure). I'll be able to move along with the other bits when they arrive.


Custom ballscrew nut mounts are on the way, then we can mount and test these new ballscrews!

One I can confirm that everything lines up the way it should, I can use the steel from the old ballscrew mounts to practice some arc welding before coming back to these. At the moment getting steel is tricky. I intentionally didn't weld on the inside so I can tackle that later, after some practice.