Anything welding

I hate to be the bearer of bad news... but... you forgot to weld it.

 

3 sets of sliders and 2 slider adapters between yesterday and today. I’m tired

 

An

lol

I always build the entire cage first then take it apart and completely weld each tube and re notch tubes in multiple joints.

 

If you were to do that for a non friend but a regular guy asking you to build a cage, what would you charge? I’d love to build a cage for my Jeep but I don’t trust my abilities to make something that is supposed to save my life. One day I may try but Most likely not.

 

Lmao I wanted to build my own cage for a low speed flop, but after this bumper, fuck that. That’d be hard.

 

buy bendtech

 

Oh, oh I did. The $300 version. It’s the notching that kicks my ass.

 

I'd think it be less work to concentrate on keeping the rubber in contact with mother earth.

#mallcrwl4lfe

 

hahaha yeah they’re not the easiest to figure out

 

Shiny side up is the way to go.

 

What’s funny is I calculated my bumper bends all by hand and it turned out better than when I’ve tried the software. The software kicks my ass.

 

I think that’s always the goal.. However, it’s not always what happens. I tried an obstacle at Pyeatt Draw a couple weeks ago. It felt a bit scary and was right near a ledge with a 4 foot drop. I ended up getting hung up on my gas tank skid and had to back down. But the feeling of having my right side tires nearly off the edge really made me feel like I want a better roll cage and some harnesses.

 

Ive never tried the software.. is it similar to fusion360?

 

The software helps the most with out of plane bends. But yeah there is definitely a decent learning curve

 

Well I’ve never tried fusion, so I can’t compare. It is fairly user friendly, I just haven’t mastered it yet, unsurprisingly.

 

I do everything by hand... it gets a lot easier the more you do it

 

$110/hr... a basic cage takes me about a week.

Here is a scout I did a while back that was about $5k

 

That’s what I’m seeing too, just based off this one experience. I watch TFS (the fabricator series) on YouTube and he shows how to make cages by hand. Calculating the bends really isn’t that bad.

 

Another good trick is to keep some scrap stuff around and make little mock up bends to figure out the exact angle... works especially well when trying to tuck a cage extra tight

 

That’s sorta what I did. Sorta. I made a cheater where I made a 90° bend and notched a slit right where the bend starts. That way I can put a tape measure in it to help measure stuff. The other, I took a straight piece of tube and made a line every inch. Put it in the bender and made another mark every 10° Up to 90°. Now I know how much material is needed in a bend. Learned that from TFS and helped a lot.