Am I really an engineer?

First of all, yes, yes I’m really becoming an engineer, electro tech to be precise, but my passion does not stop at being that one engineer that sits behind his desk, only doing research and some simulations of new components, no, I want to be the one that conceptualizes, designs, prototypes, and build the very first version of a project. To accomplish this goal, I will need to have skills from the field, I do this by doing stuff that is normally done by a professional.

Here is my way to work on such a skill

1. Start by doing research

   It’s crucial to know what you’re up against before starting something that may be too much to handle at that moment.

2. If near, ask somebody who has experience in the skill you are pursuing, to be at your side.
3. Prepare the tools you’re going to make use of.

4. Wear the correct clothes!

   Rule of thumb, if it concerns modifying the form of material, wear full body covering clothes.

5. Start and stay organized!

So now why I made this post.

Yesterday, all my troubles see—- wait that’s a song, Yesterday I welded for the first time in my life, and I’m going to let you experience it step by step!

My mother has a bunch of horses to take care of, and her father has a little vegetable garden right next to the paddock. The horses like to go on a “buffet a volonté” eating the plants my grandfather so carefully planted. This needed a solution. Before we had an electric line going over the standard fence, but the hooks broke off and thus the line was down. So we had to come up with a better solution!

This time, we bought some bigger hooks, with a longer metal part, the problem is, how do we fix it to the metal pole? like before? nuts and bolts were welded to the small hooks? An idea that failed should not be reused, so this time we decided to weld the bigger hooks directly to the pole and leave behind the nuts and bolts. a golden opportunity to learn some welding!

Let’s do this!

First, we assemble the tools! TOOLS….. ASSEMBLE!

• the welder, for this project I used an electrode welder

  It’s what we have in the shop, we also have a mig welder but way too big to be carried out on the land

• The electrodes
• protective gear for the welder (gloves, protection cap, and long clothes)
• An angle grinder (why you may ask, I’m going to tell you later)
• protective gear for the angle grinder (Working glasses, gloves, and ear protection)
• a bottle of water (it was very hot)

So now we have all that’s needed, let’s roll out an extension cord and start welding—- stop stop stop, you can’t weld on rusty metal, rust is not conductive and can affect your welds! Take the grinder, and remove the old bolt if there is still one left, then clean the surface from rust, and make a little connection point for the ground cable!

By creating a current at a high voltage, we can create sparks that melt our metal. Mixing it with our alloy, in this cas the electrodes, creates a strong bond between the two objects, fusing them together, like on the next photo.