welding rack

I ordered steel a few weeks back from metalsonline.com.  They are awesome by the way.  You can build an order online of whatever you want and even really small quantities.  The prices seem pretty good and it is here in a couple days.  Once it all showed up the steel and the plasma cutter with no home just sort of made moving around in the shop impossible.  In my steel order was a bunch of .065 wall 1.25 box tube to build a welding rack with to open up some space.

The old setup:

This was the first time for metal fab with tubing.  I learned a couple things.  If you leave a slight gap as some suggest then your initial tack welds will pull like crazy.  Since I was not leaving gaps,  I beveled the pieces fitting together to make sure I got penetration.  I learned it is easy to bevel it too much, which basically guarantees a burn through.  For joints as shown below, no bevel was needed since the curved edge of the tube essentially provides that.  For the mitered corners, a slight bevel helps.  After the first tack, I recheck square.  If it is off I use a block of wood and a hammer whack it back square.  By doing this, I was amazed how dimensionally stable, accurate, level and perpendicular everything turned out.  WAY better than making things with wood.

I also did most welds in this project by pushing whereas in the past I almost always pulled.  I had always been spooked out by pushing you can't see the puddle or your seam since the gun is in the way.  Pushing is the way to go.  You can see well enough, and it gives a much better looking weld.  It is amazing how something that seems so trivial makes such a huge difference.

I feel like welding is sort of like playing golf.  When you are a novice, you have a weird mix of amazingly good welds that occur with little warning sprinkled among awful to acceptable most of the time.  Prep is almost everything, and fortunately the learning curve is shorter than learning golf.

To close up the outside of the miter, I turned the heat down and slowed the wire speed.  Instead of zig zagging, I just pulled the weld straight and steady down the corner.  Then ground it down.  It worked really well.

I ordered some plastic caps from USplastics.com to close out the ends of the tube.  They are cheap and they sell small quantities. The caps really help clean up the look most importantly keeps the spiders mice and centipedes from having a safe place to live.

 3/4 MDF for the shelves.  I stood on the gas bottle shelf and jumped up and down.  Nothing moved.  Nevertheless I went ahead and added a couple gussets.  I did a quick FEA and it suggested that the stress may be almost half at the root when a gusset is used.

I just need to get some harbor freight straps and shorten the length to permanently attach the gas bottle.  I also need to add a few hooks to hang all the hoses and accessories.  Then I need to clean for a few more days before getting back to the car.