Here I'm rolling .016" copper against .020" brown fiber paper, with the copper atop an etched, hardened impression plate, and a smooth hardened plate covering the cardboard (floor underlayment paper from the hardware store). This sandwich keeps the copper reasonably flat (much flatter than without the flat plate) , which makes it a lot easier to load into the pancake (cutting) die. The rolling mill 'Frankenmill' is a Cavallin manual that I've put a gear motor on via #40 roller chain and sprockets. 3-phase motor with VFD inverter and foot switch. Guitar noise by me.

I'm in my second year of welding and for my senior project I've decided to make a realistic life-size crow sculpture, but I've come across a problem that I have no clue on how to even attempt;

I want the beak to be moveable, but I'm not sure what is the best way to do it. I've made a wire frame base to act as it's "skull"; which is 2" and 3/8th in length without the beak. At first i thought maybe a rotary switch with detents would work as it would help hold the beak in whatever position I want it in, but realized the skull may be too small - and it wouldn't allow the top beak to move like a real crows can.

Should I just give up some of the realism to make things easier? Or are there any other options I could try to make it work? Any help is greatly appreciated!

(I can provide pictures if needed on Monday when I return to the shop)

Everything work as intended on it, but it won't arc. Started investigating and the plunger on the transformer doesn't move when clicking the trigger. Tried the reset but doesn't change anything. Idk what to do from here. I've read about an overheating problem but haven't seen any signs of that. Then also a different main relay that isn't apparent on my machine. Any help would be great and honestly don't care if I Jerry rig this ho.

I want to build a 25.5” diameter mosaic sphere that is held up by a single pole set into a concrete base. I’m planning to weld the steel with a MIG (my professor will help me) and use concrete for the base. The mosaic sphere should only be 100 lbs but I want to be sure it can hold up more. This is also for an outdoor project that needs to last the Chicago winter. Any feedback or suggestions? Thank you!!

Got a welder recently to do some running boards on a truck and because I wanted to do it as a hobby and figured it's a fun skill to learn. Messed with t-joints in different positions, learned some pipe/corner welding, etc.

I used just some nuts, washers, and stainless tig rods for the stem. I put the washers in a vise and used pliers to bend them at different angles. I then simply tacked them together. The stem goes through a smaller nut at the top and the bottom for further support.

Anyone have any other neat ideas that are simple and fun to make? For my next project I'm going to torch-cut some metal, and make a key-hanger by my front door. Just not sure what to use for the hangers themselves on the backing metal.

Hey guys, I'm somewhat new to the railing industry, and this is my first time encountering a staircase like this. Usually, it's pretty easy where you have a stringer going to a landing, but this one butts up agains the 3rd stringer. I wasn't sure how this was going to turn out. I'm still unsure about the looks of the flat bar going grom the grab peice to the corner, but i guess no going back now.

I've spent the last couple of years deep in production engineering for custom stainless steel cabinetry (kitchen, balcony, vanity). People assume it's just "sheet metal boxes," but the takeoff/cut-list workflow is a strange middle ground between mechanical sheet-metal work and panel-furniture manufacturing, and off-the-shelf tools from either world only cover half of it. Figured I'd write up what actually bit us, in case anyone else is trying to automate this.

Two constructions that have almost nothing in common

The root of the confusion: "stainless cabinet" means two structurally different products.

1. Single-sheet monocoque / folded cabinets. One (or a few) 304 sheets are laser-cut, then bent on a press brake or a flexible bending line (Salvagnini-style multi-hole/V-groove bending), with corners TIG-welded and ground. This is genuine sheet metal — it unfolds.

2. Double-wall aluminum honeycomb cabinets. A sandwich panel: thin stainless face + aluminum honeycomb core + backer, pressed into a large, very flat, very rigid board (often ~9/18 mm). These go together like furniture — cut into panels and joined with inserts and connectors.

You cannot treat #2 like #1, and you can't treat either like wood.

The folded side: CAD works, but the bend math is where jobs die

For monocoque parts, a normal parametric modeler with a sheet-metal environment handles flat patterns, bend tables, and DXF export to the laser/CNC brake. The catch with austenitic stainless (304) is that it's unforgiving compared with mild steel:

• Higher springback and work-hardening — your K-factor / bend allowance from steel parts won't transfer cleanly; you end up maintaining material-specific bend tables and doing first-article checks.
• Grain direction matters for both cosmetics (brushed finish) and forming consistency.
• Bend reliefs and collision at corners (especially angled/mitered flanges) will produce weld burn-through or gaps if the flat blank isn't designed for the actual process.
• Thin panels (door skins ~0.6 mm vs countertop substrates ~1.2 mm) need different rules; heat distortion on visible welds is a whole secondary problem.

So the flat-pattern export is easy; getting a blank that folds into a square, gap-free box is the engineering.

The honeycomb side: you can't flatten a sandwich

This is the part that surprised people coming from either background:

• A honeycomb panel is a composite. There's no flat-pattern to "unfold" — parts are nested as near-rectangular panels, and joinery does the work.
• Fasteners are embedded into the panel: self-clinching nuts, blind rivet nut studs, thread inserts, plus furniture hardware (cam-lock/minifix, shelf pins) and snap-fit clip rails.
• Holes and insert positions have to be processed before/at pressing. Once the panel is laminated, a missed insert generally can't be fixed — the panel is scrap. A missing cam in wood is a 2-minute fix on site; a missed embedded nut in a pressed honeycomb door is a write-off.
• "Six-face seamless" doors take this further — stainless wraps all six faces with welded/polished edges so there's no exposed core or seam, which means edge treatment and face-selection ("visible face") have to live in the part data, not just in someone's head.

That last point is why a geometry-based BOM isn't enough. A CAD cut list tells you which solids exist; it doesn't tell you which insert goes in which panel, from which side, before pressing, plus the edgebanding/finish and the hardware count.

Why neither mechanical CAD nor woodworking CAM closes the loop

We evaluated the obvious routes:

• Mechanical CAD (e.g. SolidWorks) + sheet metal: excellent flat patterns, cut lists, DXF with bend lines, and a strong nesting/unfolding ecosystem (SigmaNEST-type tools, CypNest domestically). But there's no notion of cabinet-parametric ordering, embedded-insert libraries tied to joint type, edgebanding, finishes, or quoting out of the box. Closing that gap means building a standards library plus API work — i.e. maintaining your own little software product forever.
• Woodworking CAD/CAM (SWOOD-on-SolidWorks, imos, CABINET VISION type tools): these genuinely understand cabinets — parametric boxes, auto hardware lists, edgebanding, connectors, nesting, CNC output. But they're built around wood: they don't model stainless bend allowances, welded corners, or honeycomb insert logic natively. You can force it, but you're fighting the grain.

The order-level breakdown for a stainless shop needs all of it in one data path: panels + bent parts (with developed blanks) + embedded hardware + holes + finish + nesting + quote, with a change in a shelf automatically updating hardware, holes, and cost. That combined metal-and-furniture rule set is exactly what general-purpose tools leave as an exercise for the user.

What actually worked (practical takeaways)

We ended up on a hybrid, and every mature shop we visited does something similar:

1. Route by construction, not by brand of software. Weird geometry, one-offs, welded fabrications → mechanical CAD / press-brake workflow. Standard, repeatable cabinet bodies → a rules-based cabinet/order tool that explodes panels, inserts, hardware, and quote in one move.
2. Treat the process rules as the real asset. The value isn't the click; it's encoding insert selection, hole sides, visible faces, and bend tables once, so a new hire produces a buildable order instead of relying on the one veteran who "just knows."
3. Make the BOM live-linked to the model. Design and cut list must be a single source of truth. "Drawing changed, Excel didn't" is the #1 cause of missing inserts we saw.
4. Nest religiously. Stainless sheet is expensive; automatic true-shape nesting over manual layouts pays back fast, and separating parts by material/thickness automatically removes a silly error class.
5. Validate blanks on the first article, especially for 304 — lock the bend table per thickness/coating before you trust batch output.
6. Design for the embed step. If a fastener can't be inserted post-press, make its hole and orientation a required, auto-generated field — never a manual note.

The honest summary

Mechanical CAD wins on geometry and unfolding; woodworking CAM wins on cabinet logic and hardware. Stainless cabinetry needs both at once, plus composite-panel insert discipline, and that niche is genuinely underserved. Whether you buy something or build it, put your effort into the rules library and the single-source BOM, not into chasing a magic "one-click" button.

Curious how others here handle this:

• Anyone running honeycomb/sandwich panels through a sheet-metal or wood CAM pipeline — how do you encode embedded inserts and "hole before press" timing?
• For folded 304 boxes, are you maintaining empirical bend tables per thickness, or relying on your brake operator's compensation?
• Any horror stories of a missed insert discovered after lamination? (We've got a few.)

Happy to go deep on bend allowances, insert types, or nesting setup.

Full disclosure: I work for a company that builds cabinet production/takeoff software focused on this exact niche. I'm not here to sell or drop links — just wanted to share the engineering side. Ask me anything and I'll answer straight.

Can I learn welding if I'm dumb like a monkey?

I'm finishing high school with really bad grades,I was never good at any smart stuff always struggled in school and there's no way I can go to uni so I taught maybe I can learn a trade but not sure if it has too much math or physics or something

Can I learn welding if I'm slow as fck monkey

19/m💪

I'm not sure about any other options, someone suggested HVAC but I think I'm not as skills up there for that 😂

Hello. I installed a bronze sculpture onto a stone block two weeks ago. I attached it using stainless steel threaded rod which was adhered into the holes in the stone with an anchoring adhesive.
Base of sculpture is bronze and was seated on the threaded rod which passed through predrilled holes (in base). Stainless dome nuts screwed down onto threaded rod with washer.

I have installed sculptures this way many times, and have never had a reaction like this. It could be a galvanic reaction, but I've never seen it happen this fast and with this visual intensity...it's only been 2 weeks.

There's is also plenty of wax on the sculpture which should be providing a barrier between the bronze and the stainless.

Stranger yet is that it's only 2 of the 4 bolting points that have reacted this way... All were treated the same way.

I haven't been to site yet to look at in person, but am flummoxed from the what I see in the image. I suspect recent rain has spread the orange colour, making it look worse than it actually is.

Any thoughts, ideas why this is happening? Any thoughts on how to neutralise whatever is going on?

Thanks in advance.

1 5/8 mig weld on 14 inch pipe. Completely closed off at the sides only open at the front and back. Only about 4 inches between the top and bottom plate. Part is a coil ram its used to pick up rolls of steel. I work in a industrial sized shop that builds forklift attachments and material handling equipment. 400 characters is a wild requirement so im just trying to got the 400 at this point. The fact that I've made it this far is insane

I had my first big blunder today, ended up with 15 scrapped parts. That couldn't be saved. It out us behind by alot and it really took the wind out of my sails. What I'm trying to ask is how do I move forward without this eating me alive. I'm disappointed in myself, and I don't want it to effect my work going forward with a bad mindset. My boss, and coworkers gave me a shot when they hired me as it's my first welding job, and it hurts that disappointed them.

We built a family game and puzzle table using 42-inch A-frame steel legs and a butcher-block top about 1½ inches thick. The finished table is about 44 inches high.

We’d like to use it for games and puzzles, so we’re trying to find comfortable stools. Would stools with a 32–33-inch seat be a reasonable fit at this table height? Or would it be worth asking a metal fabricator whether these legs could be shortened by a couple of inches?

I’m especially interested in hearing from anyone who has paired seating with a table this high or modified similar welded A-frame legs. What worked well?

Just felt like sharing a fast turnaround, everything clicked together perfectly. Was actually really stoked with how it came out and was able to fit it on a single shade of three sixteents. Had to do some small adjustments to it. But everything packed in and there was no warping at all.

Manage to weld up a few of these as well. And I actually like how they turn out. Pretty easy to put together.

So I wanted to try tig welding. I’m using spare exhaust parts to practice on. This is my first attempts. I’m looking to get any advice whatsoever on how to improve.

#8 Gas Cup, 20 CFH, 45 Amps
are the settings I used. What do I change?

I keep burning holes on the pipe.
Also I’d like to ask for large gaps, is it best to try and reduce it? Or is there a way to fill it without melting a hole? Say the gap is 4mm

I just picked up a used Makita LW1401 chop saw and the blade is nowhere even close to square with the table. There are no obvious adjustments on the saw. I rooted around looking for a solution but no luck. Anyone here know if there is even a way to to do this? I have to have 400 characters for this to post so im rambling. That's close to 10 lines! To the mods of this sub think Im Thomas Wolfe (guy that writes really long and often tedious novels). There, I did it.