Squaring up a steel frame?

[stsmytherie]

I started working on this welding cart before I had a properly flat work surface. Most of it is square enough for my purposes here, but the bottom frame ended up 1/4 high on one diagonal. Enough so that it rocks a bit -- one wheel is always slightly up in the air.

I could just shim the front caster, but if there's a better way to fix that warp to the base, I'd give it a try.

Today's bright idea was to clamp it down flat to my new table while welding in some additional tubing for shelves in the big box. Maybe that would brace it in a more square geometry.

Maybe I'm overthinking this and should just finish it up and get to other projects?

What say you GJ?

 

[IBuiltWhat]

I'd just shim the caster at this point.

 

[sanddan]

It looks like you are too far along to move the frame that much. It would have been easier to tweak it before all of the welding is completed.

That said, the cart is looking good so far, nice design. One way to assemble a frame like yours and keep it square is to build the 2 large sides flat on your table and fully weld them before adding the short spreaders. This way you can account for any distortion that occurred during the welding of the 2 sides while you do the setup.

After all of the short tubes are in and tacked and the frame is checked for square you can do the final welding. Jump around when welding those joints and let things cool in between will also help minimize distortion.

At this point I'd shim to get the casters from rocking, not a big deal and done right you'll never see it.

Make sure you post the finished product.

 

[matt_i]

Get out thin cutoff disk
Slice the welds on 3 sides of tubes in many appropriate places so its now flimsy
Hammer into shape or pull with come-along or c-clamps
Weld back into place, gap-filling as you go.

Shimming the caster is going to be a lot easier imo.

 

[ilovevocs]

Nothing is triangulated. Run a portapower from corner to corner on the out of square side and push it back to square.

Squares deform quite easily.


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[stsmytherie]

Great tips guys. Thanks.

Currently leaning toward finishing it up, shimming the caster, and moving on to the next project in the queue.

 

[2oolhound]

How do you know which corner is high? The point being if you push the one that is sitting high - down, then the opposite side lifts as 3 points will always touch on a flat surface. You need to level your fab table perfectly and check the uprights with a level. When they are level add shims at the base to fill the gaps. (i.e.: instead of shimming the one wheel put 1/2 the shims there and the other 1/2 on the opposite corner). You may end up shimming 3 wheels to have the uprights on the corners all level.

 

[Lwel9226]

Nothing is triangulated. Run a portapower from corner to corner on the out of square side and push it back to square.

Squares deform quite easily.

ilovevocs is right, nothing is braced yet and will pull square pretty easily,
you can also use a pipe clamp across the long diagonal to pull it square...

LynnW
FoBW

 

[Superbec]

looks to me like it's already welded up ... you can f around with it for a few hours if you get payed for it ... or just shim it and never think about it again.

I don't get it though how did it went up .. did you tacked the whole contraption at once or build in sections ... this just never happened to me and I wonder why (I eyeball lots of things ) .. and you seem to have a nice flat welding table ..

 

[stsmytherie]

@Superbec I didn't have the nice flat table when I started this. Didn't realize the bottom was tweaked until I'd put it all together. Typical working too fast to check my own work mistake.

Current status: finishing up, shimming, and moving on to other projects. Only you guys will know it's tweaked. Life goes on.

 

[stsmytherie]

Guys, thanks for all the advice. Just wanted to follow up and show the almost complete project.

Clamping it down flat to my new fixture table while welding in the shelf tubes seems to have taken about half of the error out of the frame, leaving less than 1/8" to shim. Not bad.

Still need to dress some welds and paint. I also fabbed a bracket up for welding rod storage tubes. Fun first project for my new welder.

 

[Superbec]

looks good , some paint and you're done

 

[dacuda]

in the future ,tack everything up first making sure to square it up,then tack some cross pieces on it to maintain square while burning it all in.the simplest and hardest thing to do is weld up a box and keep it square.

 

[Firstram]

in the future ,tack everything up first making sure to square it up,then tack some cross pieces on it to maintain square while burning it all in.the simplest and hardest thing to do is weld up a box and keep it square.

^This^ Instead of braces, I tack weld 3 or 4 3/8" turnbuckles as temporary diagonals. You can adjust each square/rectangle frequently to compensate for welding "draw". Grind the tacks off when finished.

 

[stsmytherie]

Those are great ideas. Will use the turnbuckle tip next time. Thx