Welding drawings

[Hitch]

Theres 10/12 draughtsmen at the company we use. The best drawings come from the lads that used to be fabricators/steel erectors.

Thats the trouble we have with our 'draughtsman' He's never made anything, ever.
For example, an angled cut on a bit of 100mm box, he used to give a splay measurement...... great, except the saw is marked up with degrees


Anyway, not helping the o/p much now are we

 

[Ed.]

I can email you a selection of drawings that we use to fabricate from if you want.

Hi Welderpaul, Any chance that I could also get a set emailed to me to look at as well, this is out of interest only, as I am retired now, I won't be doing any construction but just curious as to the amount of detail given nowadays. Thanks.

Ed.

 

[Welderpaul]

Yeah, no probs, PM me your email.

 

[Welderpaul]

OK, here's a sample of simple fabrication drawings.

 

[morph]

I wish I'd get plans like that to work to but agriculture doesn't work that way! A typical description would be (for the first drawing)-
6" box 10mm wall 2100mm long with 1' base plate (15mm) 24mm holes 2" in from corners......ect ect!!!

It can be a nightmare but it usually gets built right!

 

[Hitch]

Gets no nicer than that sort, even got vent holes marked up, nice.

Sign of a good fabby though, working from anything and knowing when the drawing is right or wrong.
Worst ones are when stuff is drawn up, but the views contradict each other.

 

[dannyp]

usally i'm working from hand drawn sketches on envelopes, sometimes there is no drawing, othertimes i get an overview ish thing, anyway the drawings as show above would be a bit of a shock for me and i'd have to sit down for a while. but then a lot of things your desinging the solution as you go becayse it's a 1 off or when it comes to shed bashing really don't need a drawing for the basics of a barn once you know what dort of roof is going on it, hight span and length and most of that can be worked out from the steel
that turn up.

 

[snowcat]

Looks very simlar to the standard of drawings my guy draws up, Also keeps Fabrication and erection plans separate, so as not to give an over complected set to the ground workers. Decent drawings save fortunes in lost time and reworks.

 

[lshigham]

Wish we got drawings like that!

 

[Hitch]

The real beauty of the decent drawings like this is you usually have individual drawings for all the fittings- end plates, haunches, cleats etc, then a set that shows the main member with any drilling/notching, then a set for assembly like the above.
Sometimes you do spot discrepancies, but not that often.
Having individual fitting drawing saves loads of time having to go through the main drawings, counting plates and taking hole centres.

 

[Drains]

The last place I worked the engineers all did their own drawings. Unfortunately not one of them was a trained draftsman, so while they could design lovely bits of machinery the manufacturing drawings were often full of mistakes and very difficult to work from.
The fabrication drawings I would get almost always were dimensioned from a datum point. You'd never get a distance from one thing to another (eg hole to hole, as the drawings above). Very difficult to work from and I'd invariably have to work out all the dimensions again - and find the extensive mistakes as a result, so not a bad thing. I've had hole dimensions a distance along an angled line too.