Two tiny projects

[sharkey]

Welding Cart for SIP weldmate:

Made out of bits of square and angle stock and a trolley I got for $17 and cut to pieces. The regulator is at just the right height to read the gauge over the top of the welder, and the axle runs through one of three tubes under the gas tank so I can get the balance point just right. Still needs a couple of bits of tube tacked to it to holster the gun between welds.

RSJ Trolley:

Rolls along the RSJ which runs across my workshop, the rubber wheels are only rated to 100kg each but that's plenty for lifting motorcycle engines in and out of their frames and up onto the workbench. The axle tubes are 3/4" with 3mm wall thickness, they're just butt welded into the vertical tubes, I probably should weld on a strap over the axles just in case.

 

[steve202]

Very cool, both of them.

I would be a bit more careful with the angle the torch is at with respect to the lead there, Probably just me though, I have been babying mine since reading up on the liners etc.

 

[phatboycrxhf]

great job on both ,the wheels on that welder stand are beefy ,i love it !

 

[sharkey]

Very cool, both of them.

I would be a bit more careful with the angle the torch is at with respect to the lead there, Probably just me though, I have been babying mine since reading up on the liners etc.

Thanks! It's not quite as bad as it looks from that camera angle, but yeah the plan is to put a bit of pipe sticking up to holster it in such that the lead curves gently over and down through the front handle.

It was originally going to have four castors, but it's pretty narrow and I thought it'd be a bit "tippy" ... so I went with a wheel on each side. The front legs have crutch tips on them, which stop it rolling around and eliminate any temptation to tow it around by the leads.

The bottom bits aren't mitered because they're all cut out with a hacksaw, I got the ****s with that and bought a 14" abrasive cutoff saw so the top bits are mitered :-)

-----sharks

 

[Ratty]

Nice work sharky but less of the 'Tiny Projects'...tiny? Man. I can post a project on making one washer . So don't give me Tiny, when it comes to projects they don't come much smaller than mine

 

[migmag]

Trust a woman to make a mountain out of a mole hill

 

[Drains]

Trust a woman to make a mountain out of a mole hill

Mate, Ratty could make a molehill out of a mountain

 

[Ratty]

..and a mole to sit under it out of a couple of broken old garden spades a load of old burnt tyres and a flue brush (Hmm sculptural note to self...find some old garden spades for next project)

 

[scarecrow]

Nice work sharkey. Them chop saws are the business it must be tricky welding with that handheld mask

 

[Ratty]

Sorry sharky - didn't mean to hi-jack
How do the wheels run on the beam? I rigged up a temporary affair a bit like yours (but very Heath Robinson) and found the undercarriage tended to snag on the beam. I cheated and bought some which have 2 sets of wheels - it stops the underbit from tipping and catching when you pull it along the beam.
BTW scarecrow..look in the 2nd pic - he has an auto mask with flames, maybe the hand-held is for on-lookers

 

[scarecrow]

aaaa you're right again ratty. will I ever be right
you could be right about the rollers aswell. Maybe the angle iron guides will work but I could be wrong

 

[sharkey]

aaaa you're right again ratty. will I ever be right
you could be right about the rollers aswell. Maybe the angle iron guides will work but I could be wrong

I hope they will! They seem to work okay, when it's under any much load the tyres compress a couple of mm which improves the clearance. I was originally going to leave room in there for nylon sliders, but forgot ... the RSJ is only 7' off the ground, so it's no problem to reach up and pull the trolley along instead of pushing the engine.

As for welding masks ... yeah, the one in the bottom of the trolley is the one which came with the SIP ... worth what I paid for it, I'm afraid.

The auto one (hanging from the joists) is much much much better and frankly I can't see why anyone would bother doing it any other way, especially when learning. The other well-worth-it thing hanging up there is a clear full-face shield which makes angle grinding so much less painful.

As for the flames ... well, the ones with the flame stickers were $50 _less_ than the (otherwise identical) plain black ones, how's that for market forces!

cheers all, thanks for all the advice you've been posting to this forum, I've been vacuuming it all up ...

-----sharks

 

[MrFluffy]

Something just struck me whilst looking at the pic of the cart, I have the exact same wheels on a old mower I rescued from someones scrap pile. Or I did...
I took them back off again and put some homemade ones turned out of nylon, because they were pneumatics, and kept going flat with time as theyre tubeless without a rim seal. Course I could be mistaken and yours are solid tyres, but if they are pneumatics how are you going to deal with them going flat? Just keep a eye on them probably would work, but its worth thinking about.

 

[scarecrow]

Welder chopsaw and now the compressor to keep the wheels pumped
have you tried hanging on to the whatever it's called and Weeeeeeeeeeeee across the garage

 

[sharkey]

Yeah, they're itty bitty pneumatics, but I think they've got tubes in them, they don't seem to go flat too quickly. Lurking out of frame somewhere is a 3HP compressor in any case :-).

Yeah, my extensive testing procedure for the girder trolley consisted of bashing with a hammer a bit to make sure the welds were penetrating, and gingerly grabbing it and hanging from it, then swinging across the shed yelling "wheee!" ... I don't really have any other convenient test weight for it!

Next project is a proper welding table so I can stop setting fire to sawhorses ... next toy on the shopping list is a tube bender.

-----sharks