Ive got about 300 lbs of TIG welding wires of all types. Stainless, phos/bronze, sil/bronze, mild steel etc etc. Probably 12 different types/sizes. Much of it came came in 2" PVC open topped tubes made up by the company I got it from , a fair amount of it is in 1 1/4 PVC screw top tubes made up by me.
Anyone got any neat racking ideas for my shop?
Im getting tired of both sorting through the tubes for what Im needing at the moment and having them piled up and getting dusty and whatnot.
Any suggestions, pictures etc etc would be marvelous.
Think of the carts that tote Milling tool holders. Some are a slight angle and two or three rows. Need to find a CNC plasma guy to cut some panels for you - then mount them between tools or behind or around...
Maybe it would be like two wide and 4 deep - between benches - 2 wide between.
If you can't find someone there - or find some scrap box - let me know. Maybe I can cut your top trays and then you build the box...
Mart> Ive got about 300 lbs of TIG welding wires of all types. Stainless,
The one issue I have with that..is that my welding area is outside. Covered, but open to the sides.
Summer months is not an issue..it averages 110F here..but the foggy winter months....anything open and exposed to the fog...
Ill have to give this a bit more thought. I suppose I could use a cabinet and drill matching holes in two of the bottom shelves and simply stand em up. Thats what they did where I got the new stuff from.
Hummm..now where out there can I put yet another cabinet...
The problem with a wine rack is that the media is 36" long so it needs a minumum of 37" of horizontal clearance.
Something to ponder though. Id thought of building a rack Under the welding table I tig on and hold them "almost" horizontal...but...that would be a bit of a pain coming up with a labeling system.
And I clamp all around the edges of the table at times, so they would have to be a decent distance below the actual table top.
What I use at school for my collection of TIG rods is a tiered system of steel pipes on a heavy steel plate with casters. Picture 5 rows of 4 tubes each for a total of 20 tubes. Each tube is about 16 inches tall and holds a plastic rod storage tube. Each row of 4 is welded 2 inches higher that the row in front of it. This way I can see the tops of every tube. Each tube it marked clearly around the top. Think choral riser and you have the idea.
My rack in my home shop was much more elaborate. I used a large plan file for blue prints and filled most of the 2" x 2" tubes with nicely categorized rods by size and alloy. At it's height I had around 64 varieties.
Then ...bad things happened. The cardboard tubes didn't like holding all that horizontal weight in my slightly damp basement so the entire center section collapsed under the weight of the upper tubes.
Eventually I have to extract all the rods, try to sort them out again, and then replace the cardboard tubes with some thin walled PVC.
Major headache.
My smaller vertical rack at school is very functional. I made mine to hold the 36" blue screw top storage tubes from the welding stores.
My welding shop..such as it is... is under a 16'x16' open sided roof..simply something to keep off the slight rain in winter and the sun off in summer.
Its dirt floored but for some plywood runners to walk on and is quite crowded with a 4x9 welding table, a 5x5 welding table (for tig) and a couple benders, 4 welders, the Miller 2050 a pair of 6' service cabinets, lockers for rod, a decent sized Trico sand blaster cabinet and so forth. And of course..the two horizontal band saws....
A rolling cart is out, simply because I dont have any place to put it when its not in use and running it around on dirt..can be an issue. Im building a new cart for the Miller 2050..because it has small wheels suitable for concrete and Ive already nearly tipped it over...cringe. Better wheels..and lower..much lower.
The gentleman who suggested the lazy susan type holder has given me several ideas that Ill ponder for a couple days and then see what I can do about making something up. Having an enclosed lazy susan would also give me a place to put the consumables cabinet on as well. Tips, cups, electrodes etc etc etc. Ive got a fair amount of them...plus of course the mig stuff.
Humm..if I make it out of 3/4" ply..make it 6 sided..with hooks and whatnot mounted on the sides, it would also make a pretty good holder for clamps, squares, igniters and so forth, with a doorway to get the rods out of, after spinning the lazy susan to the type I want for the task. And it would protect the rods from the fog and other moisture we get in the winter time. I suppose I could also wire it for a 25 watt light bulb for the rainy times with a decent door on it to keep moisture out of the stuff from corroding away on me.
A side note...Ive got probably 35 lbs of some sort of brass/bronze rod..but not marking code. Is there any way to determine what the rod might be? Its in a box..but only the suppliers name is on it.
SNIP the story from "Nice-To-Hear-From-Him-Once-In-A-While"Ernie
SNIP
Hey Gunner,
WHAT!?!?! WOOD!!!! In a welding area/shop!?!? Almost as bad as rags and fuel!!!
I don't store what you want to, so I can't quite grasp it (doesn't matter anyway), but I store a 20-odd bunch of hammers kinda like Tom suggested. In a cage vertically. My stinger rods are in containers with the size and type written on the ends of the container. I don't do enough of it to matter that I have to "move" a few to get at what I want.
In the welding shop at work, the TIG stock is kept in a rack made up of sections of ~ 1.5" diameter pipe welded to a bottom plate. The setup is a row of about 8 pipes, sitting on the floor. (We only need that many different types/sizes.) It sorta looks like a good way to launch a volley of mortar-type fireworks. The pipe is about 4" shorter than the rod. The info is written on the sides of the pipes. Ours are Al pipe, but I suppose steel would be OK, especially in the steenkin' desert.
37" lengths of PVC solvent glued to PVC cleats. The piece of plastic that closes the back end, and the hinge on the Lexan door at the front, are fastened to the cleats. I have it set up on blocks so there's a place underneath for misc rods, etc., but it could just as easily hang below a bench.
What I've done for my collection of drill rod and similar length stuff is a collection of 2" PVC pipes mounted horizontally and glued together with the solvent/cement used for attaching fittings. Make one layer on a flat tabletop, adding one at a time, then make a second layer with the tubes staggered. Perhaps make two or three two-layer setups and glue the rest of them to the first. (And try not to get high from the glue fumes. :-)
The only problem here is that the caps are larger in diameter than the pipes so you would have to machine your own plugs which you could label as to what was behind them. Or perhaps fit thermos caps if they are close enough in size if you want an airtight seal?
But -- you could write on the edges of the pipes (white PVC and black marker pen would make good contrast).
Now thats neat as hell..but how do you label the various alloys and whatnot?
Btw...I have the same welder out on loan at the moment. Is yours a SquareWave verson? I couldnt make out the lable. Ive used it and its very nice. My main shop welder is the big Airco 300 Squarewave
Now theres a few good ideas. Though to be fair...here in the desert..Dymo lables dont seem to last very long.. high heat and lack of humitity dries the glue out pretty badly. But the chart..thats a pretty good idea.
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