tallest build so far

70mm tall

10mm tall

It's official

                              Mr. welding robot does a better weld then PaPa Steve

Mr. welding robot is gaining on me !

Mr. welding robot is welding better then me ?!?!
Today's machine improvement was to update the wire feeder adjustment pots to 10 turn precession with counting knobs.  

Quite pleasing to see a firm step forward towards acceptable weld quality. 
A thinner then normal build plate is used for this test. Speeds and amp setting are reduced a bit from previous samples. Beginning point for the run is the bottom right corner progressing to the top right.
During the run the three knobs were adjusted by hand / eye as well as adjusting the remote amp control knob for the welding machine. Note the quality of the final portion of the weld !
(weld ran over a random hole on the scrap metal)

Model building coming soon ???

Samples 23-24-25-26

Probably not visible in the pictures ... but ...
Pulsing the wire has upped the quality and control of the weld by a noticeable amount.
Up to this point the welding current has been run high on purpose so there was a nice large molten puddle to hit with the wire. With better wire control the welding amperage can be lowered to the appropriate amount for the material size.
Small changes in amp, wire speed and path speed are defining the end result within 10% of whats expected.
When the end results are within 3% it will be time for the first real model build.

Human Powered Speed Championships

Photo by Tom Amick shows the dozen speedbikes that showed up to race last week.
A new trike record and several personal bests were set.
Rik Houwers becomes the third person to exceed 80 MPH posting a 82.18

Velox IV @ start

Aero Velo @ start

High Desert Sunset

Wire Feeder Updates

A significant motor control update happened this week.
Chatting with one of the members at our local 3D printer Meet Up, Terry Slocum, about the feeder control design goals has yielded fantastic results.
Terry has much experience coding for motion control so he offered to have a look.
A typical, cold wire feeder found it the welding industry would have three control knobs.
One knob for : overall speed, another for time between pulses, and the third for percentage of "ON" time.
Terry added 2 more potentiometers to the circuit and rewrote the code so it does all these things.
Plus he added some lines in the code to facilitate a retraction option.
Thank you Terry !
I'm very much looking forward to trying to weld again. In a week to 10 days from now ...

Next week is the annual Human Powered Speed Challenge @ Battle Mountain Nevada.
The current crop of top machines and athletes are pushing 83 MPH on a flat stretch of roadway.
Truly amazing seeing these self propelled silent speedster wizz by.
Designing, building, racing speed bikes was a 25 year passion I had.
The best sprint speed I could pedal in competition on the same road was 62 MPH.
This year I'm doing track worker duties. Chucking hay bales, manning radios, general grunt work.

Always nice to hear kind words

After seeing a spike in the blog's viewing traffic I tracked back to find where it was coming from and found this article :

Extreme Tech 

Published 4July ... written by Graham Templeton

THX  Graham !