[av8or1]

By this time, the plates with the captives were more-than-dry, so I installed them on the verticals:

storage rack 20.jpg (223.13 KiB) Viewed 2345 times

Which meant that I would have an opportunity to employ whatever skills I have in the overhead welding area. Sigh.

I decided that instead of doing that, I'd just tack the plates to the verticals in each of the 4 corners, then weld them out once the rack was upright. In the end I think that was a good decision. It made the installation of the 4 plates go quicker and with 4 solid tacks I wasn't concerned with standing the result on its feet:

storage rack 21.jpg (77.25 KiB) Viewed 2345 times

[av8or1]

And speaking of that, I did turn the build-to-date right side up for the first time:

storage rack 22.jpg (69.57 KiB) Viewed 2344 times

storage rack 23.jpg (65.13 KiB) Viewed 2344 times

I had hoped to install the support members as well, but darkness was approaching. I knew that it would be upon me faster than I could even-tack-weld those 5 members. Therefore I opted to resume the build there the next time I am able to work on the project. 'Gotta get that hardware first though... Anyway.

Thank you for reading.

[av8or1]

So I managed to return to a big box store today to source the hardware for the casters. Chose 3/8" bolts, washers and nuts as they will fit into the caster slots well. Made it to the workshop as soon as I could to attempt to make further progress. I decided to take the plunge with the caster plates first:

casters 5.jpg (51.17 KiB) Viewed 2315 times

Unfortunately that would mean drilling holes. I dunno fellas, but after the gantry project in which I drilled well North of 100 of those critters, I'm just not much of a fan of hole drilling these days.

However I pressed ahead with the prep:

casters 6.jpg (28.17 KiB) Viewed 2315 times

[av8or1]

Drilling holes ... good times!

casters 7.jpg (210.35 KiB) Viewed 2314 times

But in time all 6 plates were prepared for mounting to the casters:

casters 8.jpg (222 KiB) Viewed 2314 times

[av8or1]

However, instead of traveling down that path, I decided to o'er leap that for the time being and return to doing something I enjoy: welding. The support beams, gussets, foot plates and eventually the diamond plate all are in need of that service, so best get-on with it. However, I decided to use some 6010 rods to tack with tonight instead of enduring the process of tacking with 7018. I still have a few of the 1/8" Fleetweld 5P (note that I didn't say 5P+, just 5P). I didn't like the manner in which these laid down by comparison to the 5P+, so this seemed like an excellent way to consume what remains in this can:

supports 1.jpg (75.96 KiB) Viewed 2313 times

Darkness was setting in and fast, but I marked out where each one would go (2' on-center) and began to install them anyway:

supports 2.jpg (54.08 KiB) Viewed 2313 times

[av8or1]

Unfortunately the absence of light got the better of me before I knew what had transpired. For that reason, I had to end things with just the two (of five) tacked into position:

supports 3.jpg (57.63 KiB) Viewed 2326 times

supports 4.jpg (26.83 KiB) Viewed 2326 times

So hopefully I can revisit this tomorrow after work. TBD.

[Oscar]

Awesome work. Love seeing your projects come together so quickly.

[DavidR8]

More excellent progress!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[av8or1]

Awesome work. Love seeing your projects come together so quickly.

More excellent progress!

Thank y'all for the support and feedback, I appreciate it!

[av8or1]

Despite having errands after work to attend to, I managed to make a little further progress on the storage rack build. Funny how such an endeavor, while simple in premise and function, can require a seemingly large amount of time to complete. Ya know?

Anyway the supports are now tacked into position:

supports 5.jpg (230.06 KiB) Viewed 2281 times

supports 6.jpg (221.46 KiB) Viewed 2281 times

All of them need welding-out, but at least that much is done.

With that, I opted to repeat the tacking thing WRT the gussets...

[av8or1]

And that's when things went South. Although we (or at least I, which I should do, just speak for myself) don't like to admit to it when things go awry in a build, the reality is that they often do. Almost in defiance of careful planning to the contrary. Heck, some of my more wow-that-came-together-without-a-hitch builds were done with little, if any, planning now that I think about it.

Therefore in the interest of portraying a (and this) build accurately, ergo "keeping it real", I thought I'd share the lil' SNAFU that I experienced today...

So. The gussets. A quick test fit prior to switching on the welder (which is a good idea in general, isn't it?):

gussets 1.jpg (47.96 KiB) Viewed 2278 times

Yeah. That's not good. Just "wha-???" Sigh. That picture meant that I would need to repeat the cutting work. Good times!

I put a speed square on it and marked it off. The issue became quite clear:

gussets 2.jpg (41.34 KiB) Viewed 2278 times

My original 45-degree cutting didn't produce actual 45-degree'd gussets...

[av8or1]

Those marks might not look like much, but you need only attempt to conduct a simple test to see how far off things were.
I made one end of the gusset level with the long beam, thus:

gussets 3.jpg (43.51 KiB) Viewed 2278 times

And then I took a look at the other end:

gussets 4.jpg (46.42 KiB) Viewed 2278 times

Yeah. That's pretty awful there Jer ...

[av8or1]

Me being me, I had to know why. I mean just how in the heck did I end up here? I realize that chop saws aren't exactly known for their accuracy, but ... actually that's not a bad reason, but I digress.

Anyway I yanked the bugger out of the work cart and set it onto the plasma-table-that-has-become-a-multifaceted-work-beast to have a look. In my history with this thing I've done mostly 90-degree cuts. The percentage thereof being quite high in fact, 'prolly around 95% or even higher. The few angled cuts that I've done were also 45-degrees but I don't recall those being off that much. So I pulled the locking pin and moved the fence to the 45-degree position. Thus:

gussets 5.jpg (70.5 KiB) Viewed 2277 times

And that showed how the cut came to be:

gussets 6.jpg (56.3 KiB) Viewed 2277 times

While the line simultaneously showed just how far off that was.

[av8or1]

And so I rotated the fence to the left, which brought the 45-degree mark well past the one side of the slot in the base. That made it look as though I had rotated past 45 degrees. However when I lowered the cutting wheel to the gusset, that wheel was in alignment with the lil' white line. Sigh. Who knew???

Anyway after cutting both ends with the fence in its new seemingly-correct 45-degree position, the gusset then fit quite well:

gussets 7.jpg (58.68 KiB) Viewed 2275 times

Which was a good result. Only 13 more to go!

gussets 8.jpg (63.12 KiB) Viewed 2275 times

And in the event you were curious, I did measure the rack itself to verify that the long member and verticals were at 90-degrees. They indeed were. So that's something. Right?

[av8or1]

So by this point I knew that the night's welding had come to an end. But oh well, get it right...and in time all of these critters were ready:

gussets 9.jpg (58.36 KiB) Viewed 2274 times

And daddy had some cleanup to do:

gussets 10.jpg (228.39 KiB) Viewed 2274 times

I don't EVEN want the lil' un anywhere near this business, so that was first on the list of things to do once all 14 were re-shaped if you will...

[av8or1]

As I was cleaning I noticed the two magnets that I had resting on the plasma:

gussets 11.jpg (70.55 KiB) Viewed 2293 times

Hah! Magnets are good for something then!

So I cleaned those and began walking to return them to the work cart. Hmmmmm...we have a sayin' in TEXAS: "Come hell or high water" ... that was running through the gray cabbage in my noggin' ... I had wanted to weld these gussets - or at least tack them - tonight ... so come hell or high water I was a-gonna do that! Well, one at least.

gussets 12.jpg (52.15 KiB) Viewed 2293 times

That was as far as I dared push things though. Welding in the dark of night is no fun and I needed to get inside to help the wife-eee anyway. So I ended things there for the night.

[av8or1]

That said, during the process of closing the workshop, I decided to take 2-minutes to put one of the caster assemblies together:

casters 9.jpg (53.01 KiB) Viewed 2292 times

And that worked out well. All that is needed there is to cut the plate down to size:

casters 10.jpg (61.31 KiB) Viewed 2292 times

My plan is to merely throw these units, assembled, onto the plasma and let the torch do its thing, using the side of the caster's top plates as the fence to guide the cutting. Should bear fruit rather quickly I'd think. TBD.

Thank you for reading.

[cj737]

It has been my experience that it is better to have the head of the bolt on the outside, nut inside. If those happen to be button-head or better yet, carriage bolts, then your casters will always have free travel.

You can even tack the nut on the plate on the interior and run your bolt in with a socket (or Allen key, Torx, etc) if you opt away from carriage bolts.

Those nuts and casters don't appear as though they will conflict, but someday, you'll be lucky...

[weldin mike 27]

A tip for next time, when making castor plates, tack weld the 4 plates together and stack drill them in one go. It saves mucho timeo.

[av8or1]

Thank y'all for the suggestions/recommendations, I appreciate that. CJ, I might reverse those bolts just to see how it would work/look. The reason I have them in the way they are now is that I wanted a uniform distance amongst all 4 of these bolts, for whatever is on top of this plate will ride against the feet (which is the 1/4" plate that I have welded to the verticals) when the adjustment is made to the full-up position. Identical bolt heads resting on top of flat washers would be about as uniform as you could reasonably get. That said, I don't know that it wouldn't work the other way. So I'll see if the current configuration interferes with the caster movement and perhaps make a change.

Thanks again!

[av8or1]

Well it was a rough outing for me tonight fellas. I managed to fully weld the support beams and tack the 8 end gussets into position. However I just couldn't get the settings dialed in to a value that would produce a repeatable result. The 6010 tacking went fairly well, but I chose to weld-out the components using 3/32" 7018. I began with the 70A that I found to work the other day. I blew through in a couple of places, mostly on the ends of the 1/8" tubing where the support would meet the long member. That hacked me off a tad, so I decreased the amperage to 60A. Still blew holes. Wha- the heck is going on? Sheesh! I then dropped the amperage all the way down to 45A. I wasn't blowing through any longer and I could fill the holes that I had created. However at that low of an amperage I found it challenging just to keep the arc lit. For that reason after filling the holes I would bump the amperage back up to 55A - 60A, but I would blow holes. Again! Wha-??? So I dialed it back down, filled the holes and the process repeated itself a couple of times. In the end I settled on about 52A, which seems crazy low but it also appeared to work. It wasn't quite as difficult to maintain an arc at that setting as it was at 45A, but it was still a bit of a challenge, yes. And of course by the time I filled those holes the weld bead looked like "Fido's butt" as Jody might say, so I wasn't having too many warm-fuzzies tonight. Personally I don't care how a weld looks so long as it is strong enough to meet its purpose, whatever that may be in the given application context. Still ... blowing holes blows.

I digress. Only took one picture tonight as I was packing things up:

storage rack 24.jpg (45.59 KiB) Viewed 2246 times

These things happen during a build, I realize. Hopefully tomorrow will be better. I still need to weld-out the gussets and the feet. Then I need to cut the diamond plate, which I may do first so that I can do that in the sunlight, and that too will need to be (stitch) welded into position. I'll use a fair amount of rusty metal primer on that won't I?

[Poland308]

Sounds like you might have too long of an arc.

[cj737]

Sounds like you might have too long of an arc.

+1 Especially if you're welding near twilight. It can be completely disorienting welding "out of position" and with poor lighting. Makes arc control very challenging.

[av8or1]

Poland and CJ-

Alright, thank you for the feedback. I'll watch for that more closely the next time out, during which I will tackle the welds of the gussets. I recall being careful of long arcing the rod, as I always am, however at those low amperage settings I seemed more prone to stick the rod than at the higher ones. For that reason I did tend to tap the end of the rod and pull back in order to avoid a stick. The idea was to long arc it just a tad until I could move the rod closer to the tubing without sticking. It's a fine line and yes, the pending darkness didn't help much.

Thanks again!
Jerry

[av8or1]

So tonight was interesting. A tad bit of experimentation with compressed air and the first usage of the plasma in-real-life.

First the compressed air thing.

Ok so I have an 80 gallon, 5HP, 2 stage vertical compressor. However I need to change the oil and the system (lines) I have plumbed to it won't reach the front of the outbuilding. I do have a little Porter Cable pancake, but that isn't sufficient to power a plasma. I communicated with a guy who has done more plasma cutting than I have and he suggested "going mobile" with the compressed air supply; in this case that meant using 2 (or more) pancakes to get the air supply you need. My kneejerk to that was "nah, I don't like that notion." And I didn't. And still don't. However I needed a solution. I can't cut behind the outbuilding because it's an unimproved part of the property, which means that it is grass. So the front it is. As it turns out, when I was in HF a short while back, they had a sale + a coupon on a Central Pneumatic compressor that is of the same capability as the Porter Cable that I already have. 1.5 HP, 6 gal, 150 max psi. So I decided to take a punt on the idea and brought one home:

pancakes 2.jpg (232.45 KiB) Viewed 2213 times

The suggestion I received was to simply use a t-fitting to join the supplies into one output and run the plasma from there. "Wha-?" thought I. Seemed like you'd need/want a check valve on each of the compressor sides of that t-fitting at a minimum to me. However the indication was that it was unnecessary. Not having done anything like this in the past, I decided to give it a try. So I also purchased some shorter hose and the necessary fittings. I put those together today:

pancakes 1.jpg (62.17 KiB) Viewed 2213 times

I'll only need two of these for now, the third will be used when and if the day comes that I can store the plasma table inside on a permanent basis. In that scenario this hose will remain connected to the water dryer/filter, which is connected to the plasma. That will be their home, with the male fitting being mounted to the side of the table such that you'd simply need to connect air to it, turn the machine on and begin work. That's the idea anyway...