jsurgeson

As per a very well known South African bladesmith, Titanium Damascus is quite easy to make, although for various legal reasons he calls it Ti-cume and it cost him $25 to work out how to do, so has no particular problem sharing his method with anyone.

Method:

1. Use only traditional box method
2. Grade 2 & 6AL4V Ti layers
3. Remove all air as per box method
4. Heat as per normal damascus, soak a bit longer
5. Hammer very carefully, by hand or treadle, no air or mechanical hammer
6. Limited to random/ladder/pool&eye/twist

Because the Ti becomes fluid like in the box, you can do the patterning while still in the box and hammer it flat again without loosing any material.

Apparently a XXXXXXX to grind and work, but hey no one said it would be easy, but it is very possible and just as cheap as normal damascus to make.

Although not a touchmark registry, it is a knifemaker registry for touchmarks

http://www.knifemakersdirectory.com/

That what makes it fun hey? B)

As to the OP, yes it is possible to use a inverter DC stick welder as the base to a induction forge, as Phil says
it is only part of what you need, you still need to do some fancy stuff to end up with a usable induction forge.

Here is a link to a project based on an inverter.
http://hildstrom.com...ndry/index.html

I think (Well, if it is going to work, you will have to rectify, can't change frequency on electricity without going DC, as far as I am aware at least)

VFD's (variable frequency drives) the sort we put on our belt grinders to control speed, take either single or three phase AC and and with some
fancy electronics, control the frequency and voltage of the AC to the motor and in turn, control the speed while maintaining torque, so I think you can :)

Found a fairly decent schematic for running led's off mains supply, but it will give you an idea
how its done, and to what length they go to protect the led's.

I would think 1k1 1watt should suffice?

Did a bit more reading, led's have a reverse breakdown voltage of about 5volts so with
your 20 odd vac you might still have a problem.

Hi Phil

This is probably much the same as what you are doing, 2 led's (diodes) in parallel, tail to head.
I have my doubts about the way you are doing it, but then I am most often wrong, not that it stops me
from sprouting anyway <_<
This is what I was going to suggest, based on 24vac, choose a resistor value to limit the current
to about 15 - 25mA, use a diode, like a 1n4148 or 1n4007 connect cathode to anode and anode to cathode.
The diode prevents reverse voltage problems.

Hey Phil, you mentioned connecting a "blinky" led to your unit, the dc side will work fine with
limiting resistor, but on the ac side you might need to use a diode as well to get it to work?

As Phil says, you are effectively putting a dead short on the charger when you connect
both + & - to the blade, so any of the newer chargers will have some sort of short circuit
and current overload protection.

So your choices are, an old charger with no protection, which will try and keep on working
even with a dead short on it, or build one as shown in the OP.

I am afraid that if you are unable to build it as shown, then you are probably safer buying a
dedicated unit. After all you are working with mains supply voltage, so be careful!

Hi Ian, ok then i will let you take care of "my" cylinder

Yes I know Tim from RB he has in fact got my ribbon burner in his forge now.
Yes i would be keen to meet up with you guys, let me know where & when

Thank for the feedback and comments guys.

The last video is with 1 1/2" air feed, high cfm & pressure blower, gate valve, needle valve and greater
distance between mixer and block.

It hits welding temps and higher with ease.

Here's another video, I think he reduced the air a bit, turned the gas regulator pressure up to 20psi

Here is the video of burner running in Tim's forge

Although it looks hot hell itself, it is still not burning the way it should I think.
It is burning at least 50mm off the block, it also looks like not all the tubes are burning.

In my original test, with low blower pressure, in open not in a chamber, it burned stable,
right at the block, neat, short (+- 30mm) flames, all pilot holes burnt and were the same.

If I increased the air pressure too much in relation to the gas, i could get the flame to burn
way off the block, also lose one or two pilot holes.

I think you have too much pressure in relation to the gas, turn your regulator pressure right up,
and use the needle valve to control volume of gas.

I wonder what some of the other gas burner experts think ?

Hey Ian howzit, yeah you right always nice to play. Still need to visit again so i can come collect "my" 50 ton
cylinder that you are holding for me B)

Hi

Have been wanting a ribbon burner for a while, unfortunately buying form the USA and exporting to Africa
is not an option. So I thought that I would try and build my own, after reading some of the posts, especially
the one where "prburner" talks about the Pine Ridge Burner, this is the burner I attempted to base my design
on.

I currently only use venturi burners in relatively small blade forges, so as don't have a suitably large forge,
I also don't have a suitable blower. So this test was conducted using the air from a homemade commercial
extractor fan, used to get it lighted and keep it burning and air from a compressor to force some air to simulate
a bit of air pressure. The air gun on the compressor acts as air control, I ran the gas fixed at about 5psi, and
gas adjustment was via a needle valve.

Image below of burner, below that video of 1st burn (outside of chamber)

Notes:
1. Burner block is isolated from plenum with fully welded baffle plate
2. SS metering tubes (thanks prburner)

Things that are possibly wrong:
1. Distance between gas mixer and burner too short (should be 9x pipe diameter?)
2. Reduction from 2" blower feed to 1" at burner too great (maybe 1 1/4"?)

One of my friend blacksmiths has taken burner to test in his large forge, he has a decent blower
to test with. He sent me a phone image of it burning, he says his forge has never got that hot
before, however is still does not burn correctly I think.
The flame burns off the block, not like it does in my video, or like the PR burners do, which i think
is the measure of success, if the burn looks anything like the PRB's then you are almost there.

He is also using 1 1/4" piping which reduces down to 1" at the mixer "t". He feels that the air
feed does not need to be 2", he might be right. Unfortunately I don't have images or video of it
burning in his forge. I am building a chamber and another burner, when complete I will post video
of it burning i correct chamber size, hopefully i will have found a suitable blower by then.

Thanks for looking.

Yeah I agree, it is a matter of preference, the web is by nature a loosely typed beast and very forgiving of badly typed code, be it html or css or most of the scripting languages.

There is absolutely no reason why you cant code in one of the older html specs, for most applications if not all, it will work just as well as anything scripted in the latest spec.

I just wanted to suggest that if you are going to go to the trouble of learning something new, then why learn a standard that will be deprecated in relatively short space of time?

You might as well learn the latest coding standards, methodology etc etc, not so?

On 8/4/2011 at 3:59 PM, freeman said:

HTML5 is only relevant if you work for a startup company in silicon valley................ In all other settings it's a buzzword.

 

That is a very incorrect statement/assumption, html5 is VERY relevant, any developer worth his salt is already coding using the new spec, or at very least is working towards implementing it, a simple google of the subject will verify that. I personally have
been using the spec on for the last year.

In fact it is easier for an individual who is attempting to code his own website for the first time to start with html5/css3, than a development company who has 50 coders and 50 design staff. For the simply reason they also have 10 years of reusable code, libraries, and existing projects to convert. Very often it is easier and cost effective to just leave it as is, if it works. However the downside to this, is that in the long run the growth and development of the web in general is compromised.

It is that mindset and certain companies that attempt to control the development of the web by forcing proprietary software onto unsuspecting or ill read developers, that has lead to the situation of no standards that result in browser incompatibility, the
need for 'hacks" to make things work and a million other issues.

If you cant or wont write decent up to date code, then do as Jymm Hoffman does, use an off the shelf framework, there are many that are backed by thousands of open source coders that will do the job properly. I wont attempt to try and list them all, if you cant find them then you should not be coding a web site.

But here is one workable html5/css3 framework, seen this is about using html5

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 

Hey sorry missed the last post

Car battery is a great idea, simply, commonly available, big current 50 - 150amps depending on battery size.

The only minor downside would be the lack of AC and amount of control you can exercise with limited lower current,
etch a bit stop, etch a bit stop. With the almost unlimited current means you need to be very careful as you
can weld with that sort of current.

So if you are happy with DC only result, and can work carefully then a great, simple alternative to buying or building.

Good one :)

Yeah thats the problem with anything web related and probably computer related, you know "moore's law" and everything.
Not only it there a new html spec, there is also a new css spec, html5 css3

All the more reason to get the latest info from the web and not a 1 year old "html for idiots" book.
If you are going to learn, learn the most cutting edge. And for those who say "html5" is not official
or ready to be used, take a look at the source code of google.com, it uses the latest, html5, so if
its ready for Google its ready for all, I reckon they probably set the pace now days!

http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/
http://developers.whatwg.org/

http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS/
http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-selectors/
http://www.css3.info/

For non developers these specs will be fairly difficult to follow as the require an understanding of web technology,
but not impossible, this along with a few good html5 tutorials will do the trick.

http://www.net-kit.com/html5-css3-layout-tutorials-and-templates/
http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/html-css-techniques/html-5-and-css-3-the-techniques-youll-soon-be-using/

Hi Guys

I have been fortunate enough to have been able to learn web development over the years so do all my own stuff. My 10 cents worth and a few suggestions:

All you need to code a basic through advanced database drive web site is a plain text editor. There a 100's if not 1000's of web page editors, the ones worth there salt are expensive, Zend, Eclipse etc the rest are not worth paying for, and those along with the freebie's you might as well just use a text editor as they are nothing more than a text editor with some project/file management and build in html validation.

If you do not understand how to code a basic static web page by hand, using a editor will just produce a whole lot of code you do not understand, know how to fix or change.

If you want do it yourself, buy a decent up to date book on html/css and play a bit. In fact you dont even need to buy a book, all the info is available on the internet for free, html/css/php or any other scripting language is open source, so is free as is the spec and documentation, you just need to search for it, best of all the info is latest up to date, not 3 - 5 year old printed stuff.

Forget about fancy editors, especially proprietary ones like ms front page, or other msoft ones that tie you to specific servers etc.

If you get stuck and cant get it right, I will code any forum members site for free, all I ask is that you let me host your site.

Hi Guys

I have made a number of forges from used "freon tanks" no problem, I suggest:

1. Open tap fully in ventilated area to make sure all gas exhausted
2. Cut to your hearts content, angle grinder worked for me.

See next post. Read the safety warnings there

Dodge:

Its kind of a stupid thing to call it, saw it somewhere else and thought it sounded cool and
might make it more impressive that it actually is :D

Thanks for the comments guys.

Hey Ian:

Sorry forgot you were just up the road and must be a sharks supporter, just instinctively assume that if a fellow
bladesmith is from SA he is up "there" as there are very few down in the land of the living

I cant remember what happened, but we must of got our wires crossed as I was waiting for you to give me a shout to
collect. Somehow I thought I did not have your cell, I see you have included it, I will give you a call and tie up a
time to collect.

Regards
Jeff

Thanks guys!

Ian, you are obviously pouting (must be a bulls fan) due the critical loss yesterday, sorry for you hee! hee! :D

Hi All

Thought I would post a few images of my KMG clone with MAP arm that I have finally finished. Till now I have
made use of a Bertie Rietveld's original designs for a grinder. A perfect grinder, just lacks the versatility of the
KMG style grinder. Fitted with a Multi Articulated Positional arm fitted to the work platen, there is not much
you cant do. I have not made pretty yet with paint, too much of a hurry to get using it.







Regards
Jeff