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Welding in the patch
Adding support
Bracing
I have never master the art of butt-welding, especially when there is no material behind the piece I am welding, so I decided to add some bracing underneath. This will accomplish three things - it will hold the patch panel in place and level with the surrounding metal. There is no way to access the patch from underneath to hold it in place; second, it will give me material to weld the patch to; and third, it will provide some rigidity and prevent 'burn-through', a common problem I have when trying to butt weld a patch panel such as this. I also used my pneumatic hole punch so I could 'spot weld' the brace into place. |
More Bracing
For the cross pieces, I created these flanges using my pneumatic hole punch/flange tool. That way, I can weld the flanges to the underside of the long braces and all the brace surfaces will be aligned with each other, giving a nice flat surface to weld the patch panel to.
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Ready for the patch panel
Here are all four braces welded into place. A little light grinding of the welds and it will be ready for the patch panel to be welded in. I used my hole punch tool on the long braces as well. This eliminated having large lumps of weld that would need to be ground off.
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