Metal Workshop

In my first workshop Dallas spoke about the health and safety of working in the metal workshop we were told to tie hair back and not to have anything dangling off our clothes as they could get trapped in machinery, he also gave us gloves to wear to protect us from the sharp metals and from heat. Then he showed us how every machine worked and then we were given a task to carry out using all these machines.

Metal workshop notes

Firstly we had to cut out 15x15cm sheet of metal and also a 9x9cm. For cutting metal we had to use this rather large guillotine, you simply put the metal under the teeth guard and measure it up against the inside of the gullotine. You then need to step onto the foot pedal and jump down to cut the metal inside. After we cut out both our measured pieces you needed to take the the 15x15cm piece and you needed to cut a circle out, to do this you needed to find the middle point once that was pointed out you moved onto the circular cutting tool. You needed to pin the tool onto one end and adjust height and position by twisting the screws. Then you needed to spin the lever around which gently cuts the metal in a circular motion. You could then file down edges using a hand file. With the 9x9cm you needed to cut shoulders out on all sides and bend over the edges, there were two other machines which was easy enough to use and worked well. We then spot welded the now box shaped 9x9cm onto the circle, there were two spot welders which could do this the only difference was one was automatic and the other was manual. We then got kit up with aprons and safety UV goggles, to protect your eyes from sparks and the rays. Dallas showed us how the plasma cutter worked and we then could try first hand on a test sheet of metal then our handmade one. I chose to draw a snowman, it didn’t look as good as I hoped this was because I didn’t press down on the metal too much. It was good to experience the plasma cutter though and bellow is my result.