Monday, February 28, 2011

exhaust fab part 2

Here's a part of my step-by-step process I photo documented last night.

Put the piece up on the bike and figured out how much angle I needed, and marked with pen.
Since I already cut this piece I need to make sure I cut it on the 2.5" center line radius since that's what this bend radius is. If I don't cut on the CLR, then it won't be a circle. Even when I cut on the radius, it's a little tiny off, but fixable in the weld.
Here I'm measuring 2.5" to the center and checking the center with a machinist square.
Now that I've got it aligned, I'm checking to make sure that it's not rotated by checking the height at the clamp and at the end to make sure they're the same. Crude but effective.Now I setup the laser and make sure I shoot it through my little mark showing where the center of the bend is, and mark the line enough to cut by.
Well, I didn't shoot my self cutting it. I usually use a hacksaw. Now I'm just cleaning up the cut with the sander.
I realized I need to extend the straight part to make sure that my alignment is right when I go to tack it up. This straight piece will be about 18" long so a small deviation will really show at the other end. So I'm marking my cut on the straight pipe using a pipe cutter. The kind you spin around. My blade is not made for stainless, so I only mark it this way then cut with a angle grinder.
Cutting by eye with angle grinder.

Deburring:Deburring again with a deburring wheel:

Now I'm taking it from polished to "brushed" by creating my own brushed look. I'm using 120 grit. I then take it to the deburring wheel to smooth the 120 marks, then I take it to another cut and polish wheel to further finish it.You can see the change from polished to "brushed".
The bends have a fairly course surface finish from the bending process. The pipe I got was polished. So all the parts first get finished before welded. On the right is the finished product. Horizontal is the polished. on the left is the finish from the bender which takes lots of work to get rid of.Tack it up. I sharpened this image to show the final finish.Final product, ready to weld to the existing setup:
Kinda boring, but there it is. I've got two words: labor intensive

1 comment:

Ogri said...

Hi, new follower here in the UK.

I was looking for info on VX800s and came across your blog.
Couldn't find a contact address so excuse me for posting this as a comment. I thought you might be interested in this; currently on ebay UK:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=320666097018

Liking your work, keep at it,
Chris W