Anything welding

Stoked about this little guy. Variable speed and direction, tilts, foot pedal controlled, and the cutest little 3-jaw chuck I've ever seen.

 

No welding.

Casters and leather came in yesterday, so now I can better assess the height of my stool.



Modified the leg design slightly for the appropriate sitting height I'm aiming for, and moved forward with cutting them all out.





Just a mock up, this is what the circular template is for.



Foam hasn't shipped yet, and won't for another week or two so I don't want to move forward just yet.

 

I was able to get a start on these today, I ran out of gas before I could finish them. Once I finish welding them, I will take and clean up the faces on the grinder, a couple of the pieces had a bit of warp to them. While they would work just fine for what I do, I want to try and get them to be as close to perfect as my tooling and skills will allow, and I am pretty sure that will be a bit better than how they currently are.

These where laser cut, I originally was going to run the files on the plasma table but I ran into cut issues with the new mount and trying to get the 1/4" plate dialed in. once deburred the parts fit extremely well, and the triangles where a breeze to get almost perfectly true.






The extra parts on the these made it a bit harder to get true from the get go, I had to tack and then spend a little bit of time tapping them in straight, before welding them out





Right now I have a pair of each of the above squares, later on I will order another set so I will end up with 4 each, since that just feels like the right number of each to have on hand.

 

How can I bend a loop like this into some 14 gauge flat bar. Im imaging bending it around a pin, cutting off the excess and closing it up.

 

Some sort of bar bender. A bunch of companies make them swag tmr homemade.

 

With this

https://www.tmrcustoms.com/collections/trending/products/the-machete-rod-flat-bar-bender

Or make your own, tons of free plans online and it's super easy

 

Or, in my case, MAP gas, vice, steel solid pin, a hammer, and a weekend of determination.

 

While that totally works, it's pretty far from ideal since you're pretty much at constant risk of accidentally heat treating or softening the steel and basically creating potential failure points that just wouldn't be there if the bend was done at a consistent temp. Still great for stuff that's not critical or severely overbuilt

 

Cut a few parts for the stool, mainly cause the foam just shipped so I can start moving towards assembly





I might weld them on my parts this Sunday, we'll see

The little tubes will go like this



For a clean install, I got some acorn nuts for mounting the casters with

 

Making some blocks for the welding table. a pair of 2-4-6 blocks and 2 pair of 1-2-3 blocks

 

Got started a day early on the stool.





Shims make it fast and easy to ensure these are squared and center on the legs.









All tacked and ready for welding. Found that I need to adjust my file for the template as it kept sitting the legs too high in relation to the center tube.

Just used my mini cut-off tool to notch the slots a bit longer.





Half-way welded up, wanted to ensure all the casters touch the ground.



Only thing I'm not looking forward to is grinding down the large nuts to place inside the tube for welding.

I'll do that later this week.



Can't wait until it's done!

 

You really need to build yourself a 2x72 belt grinder, it would make quick work of those nuts, chuck a bolt up in a drill that the nuts fit on and spin the nuts while grinding on the belt grinder.

https://youtu.be/2dxCAHU_xpY?si=Edbli2djY-lLX51d

 

Nice try, not gonna make something I'll only use once

Does look good though!

 

the only way you would only use it once is if you stop fabricating.

 

Truuuuue but I use my angle grinder just for beveling when needed.

That and when I do need to cut/clean something off I'm fixing, it'd be too large to pick up for using that belt sander.

I know I'm finding more reasons against using it than for but gotta be real with my needs!

That setup would be overkill and won't be used much at all. Not to mention I never grind down my welds.

 

Someone on another forum wanted to see a better pic of it so far.

She rolls crazy smooth all over.



I'm back and forth on this whole flat ring for a footrest or round tube.

Don't know anyone near me that can roll some tube unfortunately

 

Find an old flywheel and rob. the ring gear off it. That would look pretty industrial.

 

That'd look pretty cool!

 

If you can not find a ring gear that will work, something else you could do is a loop of heavy chain, weld the links up solid.



or even a large roller chain..

 

That'd look really cool too!