Aluminum diamond plate flooring, for a fishing boat (jakeru's #10)

[jakeru]

I did another project on a fishing boat recently, doing some 2-1/4 hours of welding work to help the owner complete the installation of some Aluminum diamond plate flooring.


The flooring was designed so it can be removable, in case any maintenance was needed at some future time on the structure underneath the floor. So it was basically designed in two large pieces so it could be possible to lift it out. Where the two pieces butt up against each other, I added some 1.5" 6061-T6 angle (about 1/16" thick) to the floor supporting structure underneath the joint to add some rigidity and support the flooring there. The owner is planning on installing a rubber trim/transition piece along this joint eventually, that he found as some kind of flooring product.

You can see how I propped the edge of one piece of flooring up using C-clamps to give me enough access to weld the support angle material underneath:


This was kind of a tricky area to get the TIG torch down into and weld, but helped provide extra rigidity to the floor support structure, so was worth the effort:


I went over the weld beads with a second pass to smooth them out (since the metal flooring material would be bearing on it.) Here are some completed welds of the angle / support structure underneath:


I found some of the diamond plate (main flooring material) was 1/16" thick (excluding the raised diamonds) while some other of it was 1/8" thick. It was recycled, and there was some nasty, mastic or chaulking type adhesive underneath that I had to remove from one plate around the weld area. I just did it with a flap wheel, but it blew quite the mess.


I prepared the top, bottom, and side surfaces along the weld joint with a combination of the 4.5" flap wheel (electric angle grinder powered) and a 3" scotch brite disc (air die-grinder powered), following by a solvent wash:


There was a little bit of warpage after the welding, but nothing that can't be able to be hammered out flat later if necessary. I was pleased with how it came out.




I did all this welding with 3/32" 5356 filler, TIG welded with the torch switch (and a bit of downslope, 1-1.5 seconds or so, to be able to regulate the current with the torch switch.) I never did determine the alloy of the diamond plate.