After teaching MIG welding for a few months, I was speaking with my welding mentor, Seth Avecilla, about how I wanted to dive into TIG through a project-based class. We settled on a TIG mechanism class, combining welding and active movement.
I realized this class was the perfect opportunity to fabricate a model of one of my favorite Disney rides: the Tower of Terror. If you are unfamiliar with the experience, the Tower of Terror is a ride where park-goers are trapped in a haunted elevator and travel up and down a broken elevator shaft, accelerating faster than gravity.
I chose to use a scotch-yoke mechanism for my falling elevator shaft:
Then I created a rough CAD of what this mechanism would look like for my Tower of Terror model:
Once I had finalized my mechanism and measurements, I began fabricating. This process involved a dance between many machines, including the CNC plasma cutter, laser cutter, shear, and portaband.
When I began welding, I encountered oddly colored hues, small sparks, and bubbles. After checking settings, confirming shielding gas output, and changing tungsten electrodes multiple times, my results did not improve. I then discovered the sheet metal I was using was hot-rolled. The manufacturing process for hot-rolled sheet metal leaves a mill-scale on its surface that introduces a lot of impurities. Because of this, a simple wipe down with IPA was not enough preparation for TIG welding; it had to be sanded and scrubbed with Scotchbrite. This made welding a little more challenging, but I am very happy with the results thus far!
I intended for this to be a long-term project that I can continuously add details to. Check back in later for more updates on the side and top towers!