Jeez man, way to update your thread! (yes, I'll be Mr. Pot, you can be Mr. Kettle).
Brief update- I've had Mo's front bumper support/steel crash bar for a while now. I've been delaying the project of welding it up and boxing it in because I hate cutting with cutoff wheels on my air tools, grinder, and I also dislike cutting with the O/A torch (mainly because I'm not awesome at it yet, though I get the job done it usually needs lots of cleanup with a grinder)
Enter 1/8" steel plate, my new Hypertherm Powermax 45 Plasma cutter, and my well used Hobart 210 MIG. This project was quick and simple. I only had short bursts of time to work on it, literally an hour here, an hour there, so much of my time was spent setting up, then cleaning up. I did, however, get to finish it up and shoot some pictures in the process.
The tools I'm dragging in and out:
First, we've got the bumper support. I don't think I have any full pics of it before I started work on it, but it was basically cut in the standard up side down, squared off "U" shape.
The two ends that needed to be boxed:
Cut out a template from cardboard, fit as a mirror to each side.
Fired up the plasma cutter for the first time:
Test fit before I ground off the (minimal) slag:
Welded in and ground down:
Next up was the long center piece to be boxed in. You can see the ends are done:
Template:
Traced to 1/8" steel:
Clamped and ready to be cut:
Test fit:
Burned in:
Painted:
The end!
