[peteeng]

Evening All - I made a new 12mm thick column with legs for the cars. I made one without webs and one with webs on the car tabs. Very little difference. The intent is to laser cut parts, braze together (Tobin Bronze) then finish machine. Zinc plate. Or maybe do it in stainless like my routers, have to cost both ways.

Now to look at the base as this is the big weighty object. The column is 47kg so in spec for weight. Peter

[joeavaerage]

Hi peteeng,
have you considered something like plates welded together with a sub-arc process?

I used to service a sub-arc machine that that could run at 600A continuously and lay down perfect welds 20 plus mm deep in one pass.
Another customer had two Lincoln DC600's in parallel for 1200A cont and welds 30 and 40mm thick!!

My thought for a column was to get two short lengths of very heavy duty Universal Column, some of which has flange thicknesses of 25mm and web thicknesses of
17mm. If they were machined or otherwise cut down into two 'C' sections and welded together using full penetration sub-arc welding...... Naturally they would have to be
heat-treated and so on, but could be done very economically in small to medium runs.

The machine I am thinking of held long lengths of steel plate, up to 15m long, in a jig that used hydraulic and pnuematic clamps to hold them together and the weld machine would quietly
advance under motor traction along the weld. They use it for making bespoke beams and columns for buildings and has seen very extensive use since Christchurch buildings are still
being built after the earthquake of ten years ago.


Quirky thing about sub-arc is its remarkably quiet and virtually no flash. When operating you can see the weld current at 400A plus and the 2.4mm weld wire disappearing into the
weld zone but is of course totally submerged in flux so you cant see the weld arc. In fact you can hardly hear it either, you can certainly hear the hum of the welder but the
weld itself sounds like a panful of bacon frying....thats it!

Really good, uniform, full penetration welds in 20mm plates easy as can be.

Craig