So ive been tasked with cutting up large steel elements for 10 days, and not being an actual robot like my coworker who dont care about standing right ontop of a pile of 10kg of redhot glowing metal and just pushing the cut direction inwards on a what- 300mm thick carbon steel plate, i need to start making the cut by pulling it towards me.

So i came up with an idea to fasten 2 10mm steel plates on the torch. 50x50x10 steel, Ø10/M6, on one plate a piece of plate is welded on, like a knifeblade fits down ontop of the 2 torch tubes and on the bottom theres 2 pieces of plate that accepts the remaining tube on the underside. So you bolt this together and on the underside theres a M6 tapped hole which can accept a threaded rod, you can then cut this piece of rod to desired lenght or simply bend it to adjust the height you want to your material. However dragging this is difficult and makes for difficult cutting when you drag it too far, keeping the melt going is high precision job. So decided to take a piece of 30x5mm steel, drill a hole in the middle, 8mm i think, bend it 90*. The hole got a bit funny looking so i drilled it again with 8mm, held a 6mm nut in place, welded it and now i had a bipod ready to be mounted on the gas torch, to my surprise it gives me a little wobble and at the same time stability, something to rest my bodyweight on when leaning in over the metal.
It was intended to be used to drag along the metal plates but i think im gonna need to secure the bipod better, maybe weld it in place really? However, turns out you can walk it quite easily, effectively distancing from previous spot and at the same time angle the torch head.
So another problem i had was that i couldnt see what the hell i was doing and being ontop of a crack of molten metal comes with its own hazards, by chance i had a stainless mirror laying around attached to a bulb, squeezed together with some roundbar twisted so you can adjust the mirror in 360 degrees, simply mounting this on the gas torch using plastic strips does the job plus you can slide it back and forth a little bit, meaning i went from with great difficulty and exhaustion cutting through this steel, to simply guiding it with my left hand while being able to see everything going on down in the crack.
At this point it feels like i should be paying my company money, because it just got that easy.
mirror torch.JPGepic torch day.JPG