Welding Armor?....

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Hey AdmiralTyrannus, how hard would it be to anneal sheet steel to that hardness that you mentioned, "unless you plan on hitting your armor with hammers and bricks"? I'm wanting to get into metal fabrication, and am planning on trying to make a set of similar materials and techniques as Sandbagger in the eventual future.
 
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The cost of aluminium is more than steel. The more time-consuming preparation, methods and higher skill levels of welding aluminium versus the simplicity and forgiveness of steel. Weight-wise, aluminium is about half the weight of steel so you can use steel half the thickness and still achieve the same shell.

So why not go steel? Easy to work, cheap, easy to weld, file, sand and finish.

SB
 
That works for me. I was actually checking out sandbagger's Iron man thread and he says the stuff is pretty light weight about as heavy if you are using fiber glass and resin and stuff of that nature, so that's relief for me and that chart would be awesome bro, thank you.

I read sandbagger's Iron Man build. I'm pretty sure he gave up on aluminum and switched to steel because its cheaper to get / borrow gear for welding steel than aluminum.
 
Hey AdmiralTyrannus, how hard would it be to anneal sheet steel to that hardness that you mentioned, "unless you plan on hitting your armor with hammers and bricks"? I'm wanting to get into metal fabrication, and am planning on trying to make a set of similar materials and techniques as Sandbagger in the eventual future.




It's not hard to do with almost any metal, most methods require heating metal to attain a certain hardness. Issue with that is, getting an oven you can leave running at high temperatures (250-400 degrees) for anywhere from 20-38 hours.

Best to use google-fu to reference what metal you are using and what methods are recommended for it. I don't remember all of the methods for all the metals so I can't be super helpful, sorry :(
 
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Thanks Sandbagger, I actually went to a few welding spots near my house and they all said the same thing about steel over AL. Granted they looked at my like I was crazy and most said its an impossible job, then I showed them your thread and I think they lost there minds haha.

This is going to take a lot longer than I thought because I don't have the proper equipment and it will take some time to save up but I'm willing to be patient, but this thread may need to go on pause or I may need to start a new one when I get all my ducks in a row. The Maker space that I go to has a metal shop but its more limited to other things and not much in the welding department. One of the co-workers there does welding on the side and offered to help so we may end up making this a group build because he is very interested.
 
i have alot of experiacn in weilding and i Think that u need thicker sheets for the mig like 5mm sheets but if u r useing the tig it would mabye work pretty well it depends on how skilled you are. if you are new to weilding try to weild on some test sheets and Watch some videos on Youtube.


good luck spartan :)
 
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