Took me 6 months to figure out this simple welding jig setup

I've been fighting with warped flanges on pressure vessels for way too long. Finally tried a trick my old foreman mentioned back in 2019 about using a spring clamp and a spacer bar to hold things square before tacking. I set up a test piece at the shop in Gary last Tuesday and it worked perfect first try. No more grinding down crooked tacks or redoing whole sections. The spacer bar was just a piece of scrap 1/4 inch plate I cut to size. Has anyone else found a simple shop floor hack that saved them hours of rework?

3 comments

3 Comments

jessica7071mo ago

Hate when something simple like that takes months to stumble onto.

alicecraig1mo ago

Yeah totally! I had the same lightbulb moment with a T-jig fixture for pipe saddles, kept fighting with misalignment until I just grabbed a piece of flat bar and a couple C-clamps and bam, solved it. It's wild how the simplest fixes hide right in plain sight.

baker.holly1mo ago

Did you try preheating the flange area before tacking? We had a similar issue with a 16-inch nozzle flange, and our welder found that a local preheat (just 250 degrees with a torch) took the warp right out before we even clamped it. The spring clamp trick is solid, but (and this might just be me) I think the heat soak does more work than the clamp in the long run.