Out in the garage, the rotary weld positioner has been in terrible need of some small upgrades that will make it much more useable in certain situations like working on longer pieces. A schematic outline of each of the three pieces in this work is shown below:
The first of three parts, shown on the left, is to make a simple pedistal stand top to mount the rotary weld positioner on. The weld positioner is quite heavy and is pretty hard to move onto and off of the welding table when it is needed. I’ve decided to build a small steel reinforced table top to mount to the top of a simple cast iron post stand.
This project was meant to be knocked out in an extreme hury. As is often the case, there was no need to build a full CAD model, as most of this work can be carried out as a “fabrication” project rather than an “engineered” project. The only CAD work that was needed was a simple 2D outline to post-process into a G-Code path for the plasma cutter…
With the G-Code in hand, it was out to the garage to fire up the water table side of the CNC-RouterParts/AVIDcnc machine. A sheet of 2ft x 4ft x 16Ga mild steel was placed on the water table and a location was dialed in to set the X0, Y0, Z0 location.
The torch height controller was engaged and then it was off to the races.
As always, this kind of work, running at 249ipm, is completed before one really gets a chance to appreciate all that is going on right in front of their eyes. This part, as all the parts cut on the plasma cutter, effortlessly turned out great!
In the background of this photo, a handful of pieces of thin walled square tubing, prepared for this project’s subframe, can be seen. The tubing is 1in x 1in x 0.0625in wall.
Below, one more image where the reader can see some of the square tubing that will be welded into a sub-frame held in place by welding magnets, getting ready for action. The last step before welding, each of these piece was walked over to the slack belt on the 2x72in belt grinder and the mill-scale was buzzed off faster than fast itself.
An intermediate photo, below, the welding process is coming along pretty swell. All joints were fully welded out. Only the joints on the top side were ground down flush where the table plate cut on the plasma cutter needs to sit flush when welded in place. The remaining 3 welds per connection were left fully in-tact without post weld, grinding.
Comically, given the rounded edges of the square tubing and the 4 larger cut-outs in the top sheet, I accidentally welded the assembly through the holes to the welding table. Luckily, I discovered this after it was connected in only 2 places. With hammers and crowbars and a huge amount of sweat, cussing and work I was able to separate the two, and then had a good laugh at myself. Unfortunately, I bent up / warped the top surface of this table top pretty badly.
After that, I dropped an annular cutter mounted in the mag-drill Through each of the 4 holes in top surface of the table and opened up the top of the structural support square tubing. This allows the 3/8in mounting bolts and washers to sit below the surface of the table when attaching the table top to the cast iron post assembly.
As shown below, these pieces get stowed back in a corner of the garage. The lighting and clutter are not overly conducive to this type of photo but one can get a feel for how this turned out.
All in all this piece of the project was quite simple / straight forward. Having the CNC plasma cutter just made it go that much faster. Next week I’ll post the rotary material support project that is used hand in hand with project.
Nothing ground breaking here, I just thought to share some of the work I’ve been doing with the AVIDcnc plasma table.
Kenneth
For my uses, plasma and welding go hand in hand for so many projects. (not all but many) My only regret is waiting so many years to get started with both.