All the Tanks Together ??

[Thrutraffic]

First project - Welding Cart.

The tank platform I put on the back is large enough for several tanks. For now there will just be 1 75/25 and 1 100% Argon. Maybe some day some Helium.

The cart is large enough to hold my Mig and Stick machines, Plasma cutter and someday a TIG machine.

Anyone think of a reason I can't put the oxygen and acetylene tanks on there too?

Am I missing a safety issue?

[sturugged]

It may seem convenient to have everything on one cart, i would consider your options, though. If your cart has wheels that roll easy , might not be the best if it could get away from you and tip over. Depends on how big of tanks you are using. the home and hobby small ones might be fine. the large commercial or industrial tanks get rather heavy though, and hypothetically speaking if the cart tipped over you could have a barrage of torpedoes on the loose if the regs got damaged. If your working with a flat cement floor with casters on your cart you would probly be ok. I know i have rough terrain type wheels on my one machine cart, and it can leave the cement floor and go outside on gravel or less than level situations. lots of variables to consider. How big of a "footprint" does your cart have? Can you get it through a man door if it was necessary? depends on where you are working. Hope these might help you ponder the best setup for you, post some pictures when you get it done!

[sturugged]

If you have a Plasma cutter , do you need to be toting around a oxy-acet rig?

[Matrix]

Yah, I don't think you wanna do that. You use a separate cart for your cutting gasses.

[Matrix]

Eveybody's beating me to the punch today.

[sturugged]

Great minds think alike!

[Thrutraffic]

Photos coming.

It's about 30 inches wide total. 6 inch rubber tires on the rear and 4" lockable castors on the front. I've got a Miller 211 MVP, a Hobart Stickmate LX235 and a Cutmaster 42. Tig will likely be Miller 185.

I took a heavy duty wheeled computer rack and am modifying it with a much heavier plate steel base and larger wheels. Mainly I'm only keeping the tower portion of the rack as it has moveable shelving supports already built in. I've had all this equipment (not the tanks) on the cart before and it was stable then so with the extra weight I'm putting on the bottom it should be rock solid.

I'm home handy man, metal art, maybe fix a few things for friends type of welder. The cart will never be off my concrete garage floor. I'm only doing multi-voltage mchines so I can get portability in the mix.

The post of why would I want to have the O/A tanks when I have a plasma cutter is good, didn't think of that. I guess my main thoughts are putting everything in as tight a wad as possible to save garage space.

Great responses folks. Thanks!

[Matrix]

I hear ya. I'm all about saving floor space, reducing my footprint .... but .... I think you should try to figure out how to make many small racks that all fit together into the same area of your garage. I think that would be better than one big rack. There's tons of times when you can't bring the work to the machine so you have to bring the machine to the work. I think you should ask yourself how many machines and bottles you want to be tugging around at once when that happens.

[Country Metals]

First project - Welding Cart.

The tank platform I put on the back is large enough for several tanks. For now there will just be 1 75/25 and 1 100% Argon. Maybe some day some Helium.

The cart is large enough to hold my Mig and Stick machines, Plasma cutter and someday a TIG machine.

Anyone think of a reason I can't put the oxygen and acetylene tanks on there too?

Am I missing a safety issue?

I personally would build 3 carts, 1 for mig, 1 for stick/tig, 1 for oxy/acet, and plasma just lays around. The reason for 3 carts is that every process is separated, and every welding process currently has only 1 bottle. This just makes it easier if you want to do multiple things or if you are welding on things in tight areas.

A big thing about having 4 bottles and 4 outfits so close to each other is that more things together, more things to go wrong. Examples are more bottle to worry about, grinding dust in all machines, more cables/wires in the way, more consumables getting dirty.

I don't know what machines you have but a cart can be as simple as a hand cart with a shelf at the top for the welder and a smaller bottle can fit underneath.

[monte55]

I hope you are not using $5 POS Harbor freight or the like tires on that. They leak all the time and if one goes flat, your unit may topple over. I have used them on some projects but not anything THAT important as your welders.