20 Sep The Fruits Of Labor
Hard work pays off. And when it does, sometimes you just can’t help but show it off.
Such is the case with Fluid MotorUnion’s custom metal fabrication. We’ve always prided ourselves on having a loyal, dedicated staff that has the skill to back up that dedication. Over the years, as we have grown, so have they, and we’ve never shied away from wanting to show this to the world. After all, robots aren’t the only creatures on this planet capable of pulling off razor-thin, argon-backpurged tig beads, but from some of the other welds we’ve seen out there (on mass production pieces, even), we know we’ve got something special going on here. Now, there are a multitude of talented fabrication experts the world over — and if you want to see more of them you should definitely check out the Fabrication Life page on Facebook — and we know that they appreciate seeing good work that isn’t laid down by their own hands. These blog posts are for them, those that create, and those that appreciate not just the final product but the creation as well.
If you remember our Assembly Line post from earlier this week, you’ll know that we have a laundry list of work that we’re currently flying through, most of which involves the preparation and assembly of our FMU E39 M5 Rear Section. We have just a couple orders left to fill, and now that all the pieces are cut out, prepped, polished and tacked into place, it’s time to get down to the welding. We’ve been jumping into and out of the welding booth throughout the day; whenever there’s a spare minute somewhere, we’ll lay down another bead. We finished one of the arms that connects the FMU system to the existing midsection, along with a second Y-pipe that will serve the same purpose on another half of the system.
It’s not really a set path we’re on; there’s not any instruction to do all the tips first, or all the Y-pipes. After all, we just have a lot of exhaust to weld, so any welding is serving a good purpose. If we get bored staring at Ys, we can move to the tips, like we are now.
Tips aren’t exactly the easiest parts to weld. Seeing as how they’re circular, they’re prone to shifting and rolling about on the table. Now, we have weights to hold down the parts, so that really minimizes any extraneous movements during the welding process, but you have to make sure that somebody doesn’t accidentally smack into the table in the middle of laying down a bead. Since we don’t have any autonomous machine gun drones to do that for us, we just have to make sure nobody goes running around the shop irresponsibly. Although, if you know us, one of our favorite things to do is run around the fabrication shop at full speed with every single saw and grinder turned on. Keeps you on your toes, that’s for damn sure.
At the time this has gone to print (is that technically still the proper terminology?), we’ve finished all the tips and are back to the Y-pipes, which have some tricky points but are thankfully much less prone to rolling and moving about. Things are coming together, so we should have more weld porn for you next week as the argon gas keeps flowing.
On an unrelated note, you know what’s a lot of fun? A rental car, that’s what. And it gets even better when all that tire smoke lands directly in the cab of Tom’s truck.
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