Portable Welding Stand

[jonnymag]

Nice portable stand.

[mikeswelding]

Greaat idea! I'm going to build one today.

BTW, looking at the stand itself, it looks like the ones I have gotten from HD. Only difference is that the HD stands have yellow handles and work great. I use them for feeding some very heavy steel to my bandsaw and they have never failed.

[MarkBall2]

I built one several years ago using 1" square tubing & expanded metal. It works pretty good, is at a height I can work with (read, not on the floor) & I can attach the ground clamp to it.

When I'm done with it, it folds flat & stands against the wall. In these pics I was building entrance ramps to the house for my M-I-L's wheelchair & walker.

[metalmeltr]

could you tell us about what you were doing (in detail) and your expiriances repairing the bots? Great stand.

[Don52]

One of the teams that my company sponsors is team 217 out of the Ford transmission plant in Sterling Heights MI. We have enough machinists, technicians and engineers associated with the team that we staff a complete portable machine shop for all of the teams at the Wayne State University regional.

We brought five band saws, three belt sanders, two portable lathes, one portable milling machine, drill press and arbor press for broaching keyways as well as the Dynasty 200 DX welder. We had 5 machinists available so we could pretty much make any part required, without any wait. I did all of the welding.

Some of the grippers were made of 1/16 wall x 1 x 1 square tubing. The original welds weren't the greatest and they failed during the competition. This particular team had three grippers. I repaired the cracked welds and ground out and re-welded all of the welds that I didn't like. I had finished one and was working on the second when they came outside to the welding trailer during the finals because the third one had failed.

One robot was about 1" too high, so it didn't pass the tech inspection. I cut it down and re-welded it. It was made of 1/8 inch angle and plate. The robot had an aluminum hinge on the top that I had to cut down and re-weld.

I hope that this gives you an idea of what it was like.

[FormerTankSarge]

MB2,

Nice stand, it looks like two of side tubing pieces go to the inside of the stand when it's set up, is that what's "locking" it into place?

[MarkBall2]

Yes. It is a simple "X" bracing for the legs with a bolt where the "X" meets. I have one side of the "X" permenantly mounted to the table with bolts on the outside of the angle frame, the other side just swivels up to the inside of the angle iron frame of the top.

As long as you aren't lifting up on the top, the table is pretty stable. When your done with the table, the legs swivel away from the top & it folds flat to store against the wall.

If I needed to make it more stable, I could drill a hole in the angle & legs then run a pin through it so it doesn't fall. But for me, I don't need the pin.