Need a Conveyor

The more you rivet onto the belt the noisier it's going to get. On our big belts you can hear when the belt lacing crosses every set of rollers, I imagine that you can hear it on yours' too. (Especially when loaded.) Depending on how much of a PITA it is, you might need to increase the angle of the outer guide rollers to turn the belt into more of a trough. That'll help keep the crap from rolling off the sides as it goes up the belt. I think our guide rollers are at about 15°, maybe more. But we're moving corn and oars, clumps of dirt MIGHT be easier to keep on the belt - or not.

Don

 

How long until we see this beut in action?

 

I spent the last 2 days slicing up the floor! Tonight the first piece came out!







Neighbor came by with his truck and helped lift out the first chunk.

Note the big rubber matt over the cable, that's breaks up the energy when something bad happens!
AND IT DID! First yank and shit went flying!

 

Dude, all this time I thought you were building this to dig a swimming pool! I must have missed the part about a pit in the garage.
By all means proceed!

Pete

 

yeah, I still suck at tig stainless and I picked up a barbie car for my wife. The pool will have to wait until material cost comes back to earth.

 

You could probably drill the concrete and epoxy threaded rod into the sawn slab pieces for lifting purposes. As a general rule once you get four inches of epoxied rod into a well cleaned dust free hole, the strength of the bond approaches the tensile strength of the bolt/rod.

 

Why not mig the stainless? I'm sure it would be cheaper in terms of gas prices and your time. May even warp less due to less heat.

These metal prices are nugging futs. I wanted a 20 ft 1x1" tube steel stick and the local guy quoted me $75 for one stick. I was buying these for 13 or 14 bucks 2 years ago. It's nuts.

 

Local suppliers near me sell it in 24ft lengths and stick of .100 wall 1x1" goes for around $75-80 Cdn. (approx $57-61 USD)

 

zap,
Prices have come down a Year ago that 1x1 tube steel was $100 per stick (24'. If you're buying 20' their charging you for the whole 24' stick. Make them give you the 4' offcut )
Couple years ago 1/4" 4'x8' sheet was $75 now it's $150 and that's down $50 to $100 from the high. It's crazy for awhile it was hard to find on top of the crazy price.

 

Mig stainless is a whole nother cat of a different color! Price out a bottle of tri mix and get back to me!

 

Tri mix is only a few bucks more than standard Co2Argon mix here. Think it's $60 to fill normal mix is $45.

(But I haven't filled either one in 8-9 months now).

 

Last time I looked it was the obscene amount of it and the wire was expensive too. Something about dual shield. I'm no stainless steel welder that's for sure. Wish I was. :-(

 

Tig is just sooo slow you'd use so many bottles of gas compared with mig. Even if its 25% more expensive I think you'd still be out ahead. I know you've got a really nice mig welder it would do ss

 

You are probably right Zap. I still haven't tried it yet on stainless or aluminum. It is sweeeeet on mild steel!
I think it all comes down to controlling heat input. I swear stainless warps if you leave the shit in the sun! I hate it!

 

Resistance welding of stainless can be done without gas at all, maybe score a large spotwelder at an auction and modify the electrodes for the rapid closing action like at the 2:00 mark of this video:

 

That is super cool.. Riddle me this.. Why don't the companies that build these high dollar stainless pools employ a technique like this? I've seen how they make them and it's all by hand with tig. This is why they are stupid money, it's all labor.

 

I see videos of welding fine stainless mesh between two copper rollers and was thinking that a portable set of copper rollers brought together hydraulically that slides on a set of rails and if you want to be fancy, a stepper motor driving a screw could advance it at a set pace along the join, zipping it up so to speak. Stainless has high electrical resistance which makes it a dream material for resistance welding. I'll bet that for any decent gauge metal it requires fabulous amounts of electricity.




The 1:04 minute mark is the money shot for this video, they even hydraulic it afterwards:



Edit: so the technique is called "Roller seam welding", ideally with a machine bought government surplus for cents on the dollar.

 

Dammit! Now that's what I'm talking about! Now to make a machine with a 4ft throat and I'm home free! This is a game changer for welding SS! That would make a shitty welder like me look like Zeus!

 

You don't need a 4' throat. You need a 2" throat. Setup your seams to be on the outside .That leaves the inside smooth and is a much easier cheaper machine to fabricoble that the 4'. You might need to get a 4' break to bend the returns out to weld on.... But that's chump change in the scope of this project. Think Standing seam roofing. but instead of crimping resistance weld the seams.