This year, and going forward I am setting out to learn as much as possible about metal fabrication, primarily through welding, a plasma table, and metal braking. I think it will be a fun journey and will benefit me greatly on both my personal and professional paths, and find that it is a fun "hobby". That is if you enjoy suffering and frustration as a hobby...
Baldy343's Projects and Metal Work
- Thread starter baldy343
- Start date
My first project was a transmission jack adaptor for my E4OD and Harbor Freight 800lb jack. The E4OD, especially on the 4WDs has a lumpy pan and does not sit right on a normal transmission jack. Norco sells one, but it is $300, and that didn't jive with me for the price and what the product is. It is a fair price for a low volume product, but I figured I can make one for cheaper and off I went.
Being that the transmission was still in the truck, I bought a Dorman pan for $50, and modeled off of that. I took inspiration from the Norco, as I don't think that there is a lot of alternate or innovative ways to make the adapter, and modeled it in Solidworks. I then exported to DXF to the plasma table at school. After cutting out my base plate and risers out of 10ga, I bent them on the manual metal brake. I need to work on getting my angles right, as even with a digital angle gauge I was still off by a few degrees.
After bending, I welded up my supports, with the short ends of the risers pointing in, so the sides would have more support. My welds were kind of garbage as the metal started out completely covered in surface rust, and I was too lazy to get a total shiny finish. Here, I ran into an issue: the base plate had warped, and the pan didn't sit right/flush. I bent the adapter in a press, to about the same amount of warp in the other direction, and we were good. This was not intentional, but once I went too far, I couldn't go back due to limited tooling.
Being that the transmission was still in the truck, I bought a Dorman pan for $50, and modeled off of that. I took inspiration from the Norco, as I don't think that there is a lot of alternate or innovative ways to make the adapter, and modeled it in Solidworks. I then exported to DXF to the plasma table at school. After cutting out my base plate and risers out of 10ga, I bent them on the manual metal brake. I need to work on getting my angles right, as even with a digital angle gauge I was still off by a few degrees.
After bending, I welded up my supports, with the short ends of the risers pointing in, so the sides would have more support. My welds were kind of garbage as the metal started out completely covered in surface rust, and I was too lazy to get a total shiny finish. Here, I ran into an issue: the base plate had warped, and the pan didn't sit right/flush. I bent the adapter in a press, to about the same amount of warp in the other direction, and we were good. This was not intentional, but once I went too far, I couldn't go back due to limited tooling.
My next project is/was a storage rack for T-posts, prefab fence panels, and whatever else my dad wants to keep off the ground.
I started with 2 approximately 15-16ft sections of 4"x3" steel that was previously used as a shop awning support, and had several layers of paint on them. After doing some napkin math, no Solidworks for this project, it was determined that a length of 30", and one end cut at 15° would yield acceptable results for holding a decent amount of posts and other, while also maintaining an easily accessible height.
My vertical supports were 5ft long, with 2 cross supports. The arms were attached with 2ft spacing intervals, which I think led to a decent working height and storage capacity. While cutting my arms, I noticed that I was getting sets of 2 that matched each other, which then meant I had to keep track of the pairs.
To weld up the arms to the verticals, I got the privilege to use our new shop table, and assumed that the entire 5'x10' area was flat and true (it wasn't). I welded them up, and then had to get them upright on the lovely 8' I-beam (3/16 web thickness) that I cut in half. Holes were toched on the beam inside the verticals to allow for water drainage. The arm assy was supported while using one of the cherry pickers as I could not move the uprights due to their weight and bulk.
The 2 cross bracing were added, 2"x1.5" angle iron, with hammering for the second one due to shoddy cutting lengths. The slightly rotated orientation of the angle iron, (20-25 degrees) top and bottom flipped 180° from each other, allows for significantly higher rigidity as the 2 pieces help each other, and torsion is prevented.
During the welding process, I got to do some Texas Tig, and it was quite fun!
I started with 2 approximately 15-16ft sections of 4"x3" steel that was previously used as a shop awning support, and had several layers of paint on them. After doing some napkin math, no Solidworks for this project, it was determined that a length of 30", and one end cut at 15° would yield acceptable results for holding a decent amount of posts and other, while also maintaining an easily accessible height.
My vertical supports were 5ft long, with 2 cross supports. The arms were attached with 2ft spacing intervals, which I think led to a decent working height and storage capacity. While cutting my arms, I noticed that I was getting sets of 2 that matched each other, which then meant I had to keep track of the pairs.
To weld up the arms to the verticals, I got the privilege to use our new shop table, and assumed that the entire 5'x10' area was flat and true (it wasn't). I welded them up, and then had to get them upright on the lovely 8' I-beam (3/16 web thickness) that I cut in half. Holes were toched on the beam inside the verticals to allow for water drainage. The arm assy was supported while using one of the cherry pickers as I could not move the uprights due to their weight and bulk.
The 2 cross bracing were added, 2"x1.5" angle iron, with hammering for the second one due to shoddy cutting lengths. The slightly rotated orientation of the angle iron, (20-25 degrees) top and bottom flipped 180° from each other, allows for significantly higher rigidity as the 2 pieces help each other, and torsion is prevented.
During the welding process, I got to do some Texas Tig, and it was quite fun!