Welding Cart

[jay gill]

So I started building my first welding cart. This one will hold, from bottom up, fume extractor, water cooler, Dynasty 200.
Building the cart using 2" 1/8" thick hot rolled steel

Any comments and critiques are welcome

Here is the plan:



On the flat deck surfaces, I knew that I wanted the corners to have the flat look for the welds, so i created a couple sample coupons with different joint designs from the The Procedure Handbook of Arc welding. The suggested joint design was a flat butt weld, but I didn't want to do a lot of grinding. I also had to decide if I wanted to weld using GMAW or GTAW. Here are some pictures of the the coupons and practice welds.

These are beveled joints coupon.


The inside of the joint checking penetration


The outside corner joint. I was apprehensive with the heat and will definitely will need to use more pedal on the actual cart.

[jay gill]

To get started, I ran a couple MIG fillet coupons on 1/4" material

Not the best welds, but they gave me what turned out to be false confidence.

So the next test coupon was to test my MIG skills for fillet and butt welds on 1/8" material. BTW, you'll notice I took a corner coupon that I had but welded with no bevel, cut it in half and MIG butt welded it again with no bevel.

Well, the fillet welds seem acceptable. Butt welds, I will need to practice with my MIG a bit more, use a different process, or change the joint design.

[John T]

probably the first welding cart I ever saw with a fume extractor....

fancy stuff...

Looking forward to the end result.

[jay gill]

After the debacle with the MIG butt welds, I needed to end the day on a high note so I laid down 3 TIG edge welds.

[jay gill]

So I decided that the corner welds would be beveled joints on the flats, and I would flatted the outside corner before TIG welding them.


Here are the result of the actual welds. It will be a couple posts because if the 5 picture limit per post


As you can see, the first couple left some room for improvement. One I didn't add enough filler, I tried to add more after the fact. I feel like the picture is worse than it is in person, but that is no excuse, I should have done at least one practice coupon on the night before i did the real thing. I was also forcing myself to feed the filler with my fingers as opposed to choking up on the filler rod and dipping down to my fingertips.

[jay gill]

And here are the rest of the corner flats.

[jay gill]

And finally the outside corners. Feeding the filler is causing me to go a bit slow and causing a bit too much heat to build up by the time i get to the end, and I'm not backing off the pedal enough. I'm not entirely unhappy, but want to do better or the remaining 7 outside corner joints left in the cart.
Attachment 1519551Attachment 1519561
Attachment 1519571Attachment 1519581

And, a little out of order, but here is one with the rear axle through the mounting holes.
Attachment 1519591

That is all I have finished so far. Will post updates as I make more progress.

[jay gill]

And finally the outside corners. Feeding the filler is causing me to go a bit slow and causing a bit too much heat to build up by the time i get to the end, and I'm not backing off the pedal enough. I'm not entirely unhappy, but want to do better or the remaining 7 outside corner joints left in the cart.



And, a little out of order, but here is one with the rear axle through the mounting holes.


That is all I have finished so far. Will post updates as I make more progress.

Fixing the missing picture

[jesseowen27]

Looks like mine, I put a couple drawers and a middle section to hold 6 tubes of tig rod.

[motolife313]

Nice looking cart! Is that the dynasty on top or some kind of plasma cutter?

[Bonzoo]

Make a stool. Siddown. Scribe lines on either side of your cut. Get comfortable and keep it between the lines.It looks like you're welding one handed standing on one foot.In a wind storm.Support your arms.Relax.The last few are looking a lot better tho. Weld on.

[BD1]

Looks really nice. Maybe consider moving the bottom 211 to the center position. If you weld mostly on the bench it would provide a straighter cable with less bend for wire movement and gain a little extra length.

[jay gill]

Jesse nice cart. did you make or acquire the drawers?

[jay gill]

I made some more progress this week getting the upright welded on.


Joint configuration was to space 1/16 of an inch using filler rod as the space. Rod was removed after tack welds were made and everything was checked for square.
Mig welded. Didn't note settings, were the same as used to lay down the fillet in the the test welds above.

I'm pretty happy with how these two came out


Travel speed was a little slow on the fillet here


I don't know why but I twitched in the middle of this fillet and went a bit fast.


Overall I was happy with the side butt welds all around. The frame was rotated and positioned so they were all done in the flat position.
This last one, i decided to push instead of pull and ended up with a bit of cold roll on the right end. Still deciding if I want to grind it out and re-weld

[jay gill]

Last session was welding the top corners. Back to TIG.
For the beveled flat joints i switched to 3/32 filler rod from 1/16.

This first joint, I feel I added too much filler going over the tack.


Took this picture after hitting it with the bristle disc. I slowed down and got a little hot i2/3 of the way across.


This next one, I stopped and restarted in the middle


This last one I was satisfied with.

[jay gill]

Lastly the outside corners. I did have to stand for these, I was able to angle the frame and rest my right elbot on the frame for my torch hand and used a work support to rest my left elbow on for my filler hand.


And for the welds themselves. They turned out decent I would say. A little too much pedal on the last 1/3 of the right picture flattened it out a little bit.

[jay gill]

Make a stool. Siddown. Scribe lines on either side of your cut. Get comfortable and keep it between the lines.It looks like you're welding one handed standing on one foot.In a wind storm.Support your arms.Relax.The last few are looking a lot better tho. Weld on.

Ergh, here is where i embarrassingly admit I was seated on a stool for all the welds that I had posted by the time you commented. I will say that my filler feed is still very shaky. I am trying to force myself to feed with my fingers and not move my hand as opposed to choking up on the rod and just dipping the rod until I get to my finger tips. If anything, because of this, I feel like I'm traveling too slow at times. I do agree that I do need to get better. Thanks for the feedback.

[jesseowen27]

Drawers came out of an old Lista toolbox at work. Top is a 625 plasma, diversion 180 in middle with enough room for dynasty 280 with cooler. mig is on bottom because I 90% weld with the tig. All machines are grounded to the cart, and I just have 1 long ground coming off the cart. I can take the machines off and use elsewhere if I need to though.

[jay gill]

Took a little detour to setup my air system with dryers and reels so I will have clean dry air for the plasma cutter.

[jay gill]

Got back to welding lat night. Got the second shelf welded on. Joint configuration included 1/16" space to allow for full penetration.
I also switched from push to pull for the fillets (My welding class taught us to always push):
This first one didn't start so great but as its welded on all 4 sides:


The remaining 3 were fine:

[jay gill]

The side welds are serviceable. I did blow a couple holes pulling so I changed motion to pushing with the cursive 'e'. Cart was rotated so the welds we performed in the flat position. I unfortunately didn't take the pictures in the order I welded nor can i remember from looking at them.
You'll notice the restarts, those were the 1st two. Also ended the weld in the first picture a little quick and have a less than ideal crater:

[jay gill]

And the corners. I did change plans a little and decided i'm going to weld and grind flat. First 2, on bottom were MIG and ground before i took a picture:



For the second 2 weld, on the top side, I went back to TIG. First was a little concave, so I did a second pass:

[jay gill]

And the top side corners after grinding:

Apparently only took a picture of one.

And the outside corners. I was too lazy to re-position the cart to get them to the flat position, so the were done vertically. The first picture come out good. The second I wandered with the filler a little and left some of the flat grind showing, so I went over with a second pass:

[jay gill]

So I've been making some slow progress here and there, and haven't had much time to post. For welding the rest of the shelf attachments and front wheel mount plates I switched over to stick. 3/32 7018 Excalibur 90A.

First up the wheel mount plates:

[jay gill]

And a couple welded as the cart sat in overhead position to keep up the practice. Not as pretty as the other side.