Not unlike the previous 
tool organizer project shared last week, this project, also from a handful of weeks back, was a tiny bit more involved on the CAD side.
Even still, the project, described here, was drawn as a flat pattern, where the cuts/folds were envisioned, rather than modeled in 3D / unwrapped. Looking back at this there are a handful of improvements that could have been made to the way this needed to be unfolded that would have improved its manufacturability when it came to the welding step, see below. All in all though this worked decently well.
With the CAD model in hand, work progressed to G-Code generation and post processing / post-post processing, shown below.
From this point it is a super quick process of loading up and dialing in a sheet of 16-gauge mild steel, powering up the AVIDcnc, the air compressor, the Hypertherm plasma cutter, and launching Mach-3. The laser, attachment for plasma cutting, discussed in this older forum post was used to dial the sheet steel in square to the machine and identify the origin to the CAM system in Mach-3, tying the CAD and CAM together.
The target volvtage was then set for the torch heigh controller and it was enabled. Finally, the G-Code was loaded and we are off to the races.
Shown in these two photos (above and below) the part was designed with a plasma cut leaving tabs everywhere it is intended to be folded. This makes folding super easy as only the tabs need to be folded and then the plasma cut slices can be welded up.
Only the tiniest bit of cleanup (more of a scraping) was required from the chipping hammer and a light touch with the angle grinder left this part ready for next steps. with that completed the part was quickly folded up. An intermediate process step from the folding process is shown, below: Folding and final ‘tweaking’ operations are not quite complete in this photo but they are pretty far along… The folding operations were so simple they were implemented by hand using parallel grip pliers.
After this step all of the fold cuts were welded up and then ground back… This is a surprisingly quick process given the small curf left by the plasma cutter and the way the tabs pull the material together during the folding operation.
Welds after Grinding smooth: Definitely not perfect but good enough for this project.
Next up, some of the fiddly bits for hanging these brackets were fabricated. I normally keep some black-oxide nuts around for this so that I don’t have to grind away the zinc before welding, but in this case, I just happened to be out of them. These parts are made from 1/8th cut & bent mild steel rod in conjunction with #6-32 threaded nuts.
The part was then primed sitting flat on a trash-bag on the workbench. It recieved 2 coats of primer with a light sanding and flip on each side. Following this the part was hung from a ladder to receive its two top coats, again with a very light sanding in between. Were I to do this project over-again, I would powder coat the part instead of painting it. Over-all that process is just faster and much more durable.
In the next photos, the tool organizer bracket hangs on the peg board over the work bench and extends forward, ‘out an around’, a light weight expanded steel basket used to hold additional tools to the pegboard. (mostly not visible in the photos) In the photos the rack is loaded up with T-handle metric & imperial ball end hex-wrenches and T-handle torix wrenches.
…, Definitely not suggesting that this is the way anyone else should approach this type of project, … this is the way I happened to tackle it. The project could have easily been fabricated from some cut/drilled steel square tubing and completely bypassed the plasma cut/fold steps, or any of a dozen other ways.
For my use-case, the project turned out beautifully and is quite functional.
-Kenneth