Clean your entire weld area well, 2 reasons.

[Gumby]

Clean your entire weld area well, 2 reasons.

Of course the first rule is you clean or shape the area for a proper weld.

But don’t rule out how an area around a weld can effect things.

Example, my oh so beloved 90* drill suddenly stopped last night.
Felt like something in the gear box broke. Once I got it open I found inside the sun gear was slipping inside of the case and the power never reached the chuck.
The sun gear has 3 notches on each side that locked into the gearbox case.
Which were magnesium and the 6 tiny tabs sheared off.

If you don’t know, magnesium is beyond flammable, like a blowtorch once going.
I took the case and made two punch marks in the area the sun gear was held, right down the seam of the case so it was easy to get on and off. I drilled two holes in the case for new notches to lock the sun gear.

Now I then welded two spots on the sun gear to line up with the new holes, weld a blob of metal to the sun gear in said spot and let that lock into the case so it can’t spin.

First weld went fine and then I shaped it for the hole, now the catchy part when I went to weld the other side I got a puff of smoke and fire, some stray grease was on the other side and was wicking up.
Which in turn hardened the weld to a point that I could not shape it with any of my metal files, I had to go get a metal girding disc to shape it.

30sec more on clean up would have save allot of trouble, and a few files.




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