Portaband wing for welding table

[ryanjg117]

Thought I'd share a recent upgrade I made to my Weldtables.com 2x4-foot FabBlock welding table: an offset table to accommodate a portable bandsaw with a SWAG table. My goal here was to make the work surface of the SWAG table coplanar so that I can use the rest of the welding table for material support. I plan to do quite a bit of stainless tube cutting for an upcoming project.

I designed the 3D model of the base in CAD.


Then I had a friend plasma cut the parts. Not as accurate as laser, but I engineered in some adjustability so I could get the extension table resting perfectly flat. Wasted a few flapdisks and time trying to remove the mill scale before I got smart and dumped all the parts in a vinegar bath overnight. The next day the parts were looking great and only required a quick hit with a stainless wire wheel to get them ready for TIG welding.


Had a large slab of 1/2" thick alloy steel that I decided to use as my "adapter plate." I drilled and tapped some holes on the backside and my plan was to secure the entire extension wing with four bolts inside the welding table, protruding through the 16mm holes on the side of the FabBlock. This worked OK, but during fine-tuning I noticed it wasn't difficult to nudge the adapter plate out of square. So, I added some tack welds along the vertical lap corner of the plate where it meets the welding table sides and that seemed to lock it into position.




The bolts on the side of the support allow for some table angle adjustment.

[ryanjg117]

I tapped the plate with fine thread bolts coming upward. This will allow me to independantly adjust the height of each foot to get the SWAG table perfectly coplanar with the welding table.
Attachment 1708800

All feet adjusted and ready for final wiring.
Attachment 1708801

And here it is, all wired up. Ended up being a good location as it's easy to actuate but underneath the table where it won't get chips.
Attachment 1708802

Perfectly flat.
Attachment 1708803

All done.
Attachment 1708804

Overall really happy that I went this route and dumped my carbide dry cut saw. I'm really surprised by the cut quality of the portaband. I'm using MK Morse ZWEP441014MC Master Cobalt 10/14 TPI blades and the cut quality is just a skosh below my former carbide saw. While that saw was OK, the cost to replace those carbide saw blades were about $100 a pop and the stainless blades didn't last. Portaband blades are less than $10 each so if I burn through them, who cares. Also, the angle adjustment afforded by the miter gauge is so much more accurate than the janky angle clamps that come with all dry cut saws. Plus, this might be wrong but I feel this is safer especially for cutting finer parts. Speaking of which, I frequently cut down bolts based on the project, and wow, cutting bolts down using a portaband is way superior to the old abrasive wheel and grinder method. Imparts far less heat I've noticed. One of my next mini-projects is to build a jig of sorts that contains tapped holes for all my bolt sizes. Making it quick and easy to cut on the portaband safely, keeping the fingers far away from the blade.

Only real downside is noise. I absolutely hate the whining squeal of this tool. Earbuds and safety googles a must.

[BD1]

Great job ! Too fancy for me. I made a couple stands for my portabands. Both are permanent and are used all the time. There are great for artwork and safe for the students I teach. Mostly used for small pieces.

What make portaband do you have ? Mine are all Milwaukee. I still have my first one before the deepthroat model was avaiable. A foot pedal is handy with them.

[Louie1961]

Why bother with creating tabs and slots on this, what do they get you? Why not just cut the steel and weld it together?

[Lis2323]

Why bother with creating tabs and slots on this, what do they get you? Why not just cut the steel and weld it together?

I like that he went to the extra effort. It looks better than a hunk of steel stuck to the side of the welding table. JMO..

Nice job, OP!

[gregket1]

Only real downside is noise. I absolutely hate the whining squeal of this tool. Earbuds and safety googles a must.

When I was using a metal bandsaw a lot I found that most of the noise was the work material vibrating on the metal table. A thin piece of hard board or dense cardboard silenced it almost completely.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[frieed]

Nicely done, but .... ouch, my thigh hurts just looking at it.

[VaughnT]

Very slick! I like that you went through so much effort to design it like you did.

I'll bet you could sell the PDF for the prints pretty easy if you made them available for download somehow. Lots of folks have that table, or could use the bracket to mount on a post....

[Lis2323]

.

I JUST noticed you have a band roller AND a pipe bender on the same stand!

[leightrepairs]

Looks good, especially the detail of matching the design to the table. I would have to make a couple of slight changes. First I would have to round the outside corners of the plate, and then I don't think I would weld it to the side. Instead of welding I would have used Fablocks bolt kit. https://weldtables.com/collections/f...t-3-8-16-t-nut Just my 2 cents, looks good.

[Lis2323]

Looks good, especially the detail of matching the design to the table. I would have to make a couple of slight changes. First I would have to round the outside corners of the plate, and then I don't think I would weld it to the side. Instead of welding I would have used Fablocks bolt kit. https://weldtables.com/collections/f...t-3-8-16-t-nut Just my 2 cents, looks good.

Thanks for posting that link. I think I’ll make some for my NON Fabweld table.

[BD1]

I JUST noticed you have a band roller AND a pipe bender on the same stand!

Yes sir. I designed that roll around base so that HF 16 ton bender can be laid horizontal for longer lengths. I can do the same with the tubing roller.
Since that photo, I added the Shop Outfitters 338 Ring Roller. Now that is a real tool.
As you know, each had it's purpose. 😂

[ryanjg117]

As for hurting the thighs, this thing is actually more like crotch level. Note that I did add a radius to those edges though!

Yep, if I could do it all over again I would have definitely simplified it. Number one, I would have had it laser cut using HRPO steel to perfectly match the table. The poor accuracy of the CNC plasma pretty much made the tabs and slots a waste of time as I had to do quite a bit of grinding to actually make it fit. The whole point of T&S is to speed up assembly and keep everything square but that's but fairly pointless when I already have a fab table... I also would have skipped the adapter plate and made a vertical side with holes to match up to the FabBlock - then used the bolt kits as Mike noted. One more thing that was overkill was engineering the adjustment in the base table. The risers I added to each leg of the SWAG table would have accomplished the same goal of leveling the work surface. I'd probably also flip the gussets so that they go upward, though the little cubbie underneath the portband serves as a nice "cable mess hider" for now.

Live and learn.