Hi everyone.
I've been away from the forum for a little while and thought that an update on the build is due. Before any pictures, I need to say thanks to Grimmy for some dimensional help, which helped me get my head around sizing of the cyclotron light washers. I had confused myself up big time regarding sizing of these after reading numerous threads and looking at the reference pics available. In the end I played around with scaled drawings of all the noted sizes and settled on a final size that I think looks ok.
Now for some photos. Joining the cyclotron to the spacer.
The plan was to weld the two parts together while catching the half inch ring around the cyclotron. The cyclotron and spacer joined up ok (although my weld looks super crappy, lucky it's on the inside), but the weld didn't take into the ring. I think that because the ring is solid aluminium it didn't heat up enough to melt in with the edges of the other two sections. In the end I drilled and tapped the ring, and installed three small screws on the inside to hold it down tight.
Next step was to plug weld on the cosmetic plating. (Photo shows taking the plates on.)
From this I learnt a few things about plug welding aluminium. The most important is that the plug hole needs to be larger than you would think to allow the tip of the tig get in and cast an arc onto the plate below. The holes I drilled (8mm) were a bit small and it made the task really hard. I must have touch the tig tip down a dozen times doing this
. I think they will hold ok though.
Final step was to mount the spacer that the Clippard valve sits on. (Clippard and cyclotron light washers are sitting lose in the photos).
So... weather, work and family permitting I'm hoping to finish up the lower half of the build next weekend. Then it's on to the N filter.
Cheers
Pete