A stainless steel strip was cut the width of the flair thickness on the clamp and shaped to fit inside the clamp. After welding and cleaning up the weld, the flange is placed in a vice and the unwelded edge is peened with a hammer to flair the shim against the original surface.
Holding the parts in place relative to each other before welding.
Before and after welding. After the weld has been cleaned and the shim shaped by peening, two halves were assembled before a ball connector. If the assembly would not slide up on the ball to the desired position, the parts were removed and reassembled and shim reshaped with a two inch sanding drum. This process was repeated until the desired clearances were obtainned.
It was found that the compression springs sent with these clamps were much weaker than the original tension springs that were used to hold the joint together. Die springs from McMaster-Carr in Chicago were purchased to enable greater compressive spring force.
The blue spring is the die spring and the silver spring is a spring that came with the sandwich clamp.
A stainless steel strip was cut the width of the flair thickness on the clamp and shaped to fit inside the clamp. After welding and cleaning up the weld, the flange is placed in a vice and the unwelded edge is peened with a hammer to flair the shim against the original surface.
Holding the parts in place relative to each other before welding.
Before and after welding. After the weld has been cleaned and the shim shaped by peening, two halves were assembled before a ball connector. If the assembly would not slide up on the ball to the desired position, the parts were removed and reassembled and shim reshaped with a two inch sanding drum. This process was repeated until the desired clearances were obtainned.
It was found that the compression springs sent with these clamps were much weaker than the original tension springs that were used to hold the joint together. Die springs from McMaster-Carr in Chicago were purchased to enable greater compressive spring force.