I wanted to post up some pictures of a 6-1 merge collector I recently did for a customer. These were laser cut out of standard 304 schedule 10 pipe. I'm currently working on a twin gated 5-1 for one of my personal projects with a Tial housed GT42. If the welds aren't too horrible I may post up some pictures of that as well...

 

Thats money right there. I was just talking to a laser company that does laser tube work about something like this. Nice job man.

 

Im confused what that last pic is? just the scraps left over?, or is it with a wastgate hole cut our already?

 

that last pic should be the wastegate holes cut, and the 2 short corresponding pieces that fit for the wastegate hole thats cut.

 

Nice work man. Now get er welded up

 

yeah but I only see 5 tubes? plus the wastegate tubes

 

the 5 is for his personal 5-1?

 

Yes sorry. The last picture is one I did for my Audi 5 cylinder with twin tial 38mm vband gates. You can see the 5 merge pieces, the 2 gate outlets and a flying cross. Most of you guys out there have nice jig setups to do this work, but for me the benefit is perfect fit first time for all my custom setups. Chamfer the ends/wire wheel and go to town.

 

reading pwns me

 

bad ***

 

Now that is nice!

 

I had a couple of these done on some thin wall stuff, the problem with it i found was it didn't have nowhere near as much material on the cuts, on the bandsaw you probably get 4+mm on the cut, on the laser cutting you only get 0.5mm in places as the laser angle isn't correct.

You can obviously use some filler etc but i didn't feel it would be as strong.

 

As strong? How many manifolds have you seen that failed at the collector. I have never heard of one.

 

I did some 18 gauge collectors that were nearly impossible to weld because of this. I wouldn't sugest the laser cutting with thin gauge for the collectors. However with schedule 10 or 40 I don't think this would EVER be an issue.

 

post up some 4-1 t3 collectors. you'll sell them like hot cakes. glad to see you made it over from vwv.

 

Very nice. I want to see the finished product all welded up..

Jay-O

 

Here are a couple more. I tried to get a detailed picture on how well the pieces line up. 4-1 with a gate port and a 2-1 with a gate port;

 

I used thin wall stuff also,

I have a manifold (that a customer sent to copy) that failed on the collector, most probably a build error.

I don't think it would be a problem, but it forms a reverse V prep, (i.e. it's v prepped on the inside and your welding on the outside)

Obviously this isn't ideal to weld to, but i suppose this is counteracted with the fact that fitting is nearly 100% perfect.

Not hating just pointing something out.

 

Yeah. It stinks, but the laser only cuts normal to the pipe. I am not up to par with welding like the big boys on here, but I have found that a decent root pass does a nice job filling the entire v-groove on the inside.

 

Whats your laser? Amada? Trumpf? Mazak?

Marc

 

Wanted to follow this up with a nice picture of a finished piece. So here is a welded 2-1 with a wastegate outlet port. The picture and welding is compliments of Kelly Murphy @ Covert Performance

 

Looks very nice.

 

Very nice work.

 

Hey Brad,
Can your equipment cut on curves? Or straight only?

AFAIK all the tube lasers only cut on straight, and I'd love to find one that could cut on curves as well.

 

Straight only, however I have an idea that I’m going to work with for larger tube pieces. I can model pie slices and integrate the cut into that. So it would be a pie sliced curve with an opening and a mating piece. Sounds confusing but I will try and get a model together to show.