Connecting Steel Angle

Have you considered buying a bag of holes, and a hammer?

No??!!

This is why I come here - to get expert, enlightened > > I am constructing a 20' tower out of angle iron. I think

Al, perhaps you should consider buying a ready-made tower. Or maybe you'd like to get into metalworking, and then you could make your own plates. If you lived near me I'd be happy to give you a good bid on fabricating steel to your design. If you go looking for someone to make them up for you look for someone with an ironworker which can shear and punch.

Grant Erw> I am constructing a 20' tower out of angle iron. I think

Every major steel supplier and fencing dealer in town sells 4 hole stamped plates. Where have you looked?

Joel. phx

Al Smith wrote: (clip) Where can I find the plates with the holes? ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I can send you all the holes you want. How many do you need? You pay postage--which should not be much, since holes are very light.

On Fri, 13 Aug 2004 12:51:15 -0400, "Al Smith" vaguely proposed a theory ......and in reply I say!:

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Al

I am not sure why you have posted again, as you had some genuine replies to the other post, but all sarcasm aside, your question does sound a bit weird and lends itself to questionable replies, I am afraid.

As I said before, towers are designed so that there can be quite high stress points.

If I am right you are looking at a windmill tower, for a wide-bladed windmill. These are subject to quite high stresses in high winds, and vibratory stresses all the time.

If you cannot drill a hole in a piece of metal, can you weld well, etc? I still reckon you will be better off drilling the angle, or bolting the cheek plates to the angle.

Basically you are taking on quite a project. You either have to get the tools, or get the job doen for your, or use hand tools and grit your teeth and get down to it.

If you do not have a drill press, even a cheap one, then it's back to hand drills.

***************************************************** It's not the milk and honey we hate. It's having it rammed down our throats.

How about this - get a book from the public library on building towers, and/or crib some design ideas from commercially built towers. And after the basic design has been decided on, go get some professional engineering help...

Because when towers fall over and people get hurt or killed, the lawyers will get involved. And unless you get a specific rider ahead of time to cover your tower (which will require engineering studies and probably a building permit) your current homeowners' insurer might just start laughing when they're asked to pay claims...

I would steal some ideas from the old steel lattice high-tension power line towers, myself. All the splice points on those uprights are reinforced with heavy angle backing plates on both sides that extend a foot or more onto each piece of angle, and lots of bolts. There is a lot of cross-bracing to stand up to wind forces. And the footings go a lot deeper than you would think, due to wind forces.

All the bolt holes are punched with an ironworker machine, because you'd go nuts making all those holes cleanly and accurately with a torch or drill press. And welding it together can't be done, because you can't weld after galvanizing. You can get a hand-held hydraulic C-frame power punch if you don't want to buy a full ironworker.

And every piece is cleaned and hot-dip galvanized before they put it all together - because you won't be able to take the bolted splices apart to paint later, and rust will eat it up from the inside out.

-->--

On Mon, 16 Aug 2004 02:27:31 GMT, Bruce L. Bergman vaguely proposed a theory ......and in reply I say!:

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Yes. The guy who owned our block before us had a windmill simply blow over in a strong SouEaster. Not even a storm. Just a good strong wind. He did not put enough footing in.

This is one of the reasons they use the narrow blades for the huge gensets.

***************************************************** It's not the milk and honey we hate. It's having it rammed down our throats.

I don't remember. If there were genuine replies, they didn't help with the design.

but all sarcasm aside, your question does

I don't think so. I thought it was a really good question. I concluded that the "questionable replies" were from morons, but I could be wrong.

I suppose. I searched the literature very dilligently for information on the design of towers. I couldn't find anything - hence, the "questionalbe" question.

That can be true. I am a mechanical engineer. Although I have and no previous experience in the design of towers, the basic concepts are familiar to me.

Sure, I can drill a hole, but that will weaken the component.

can you weld well,

I can weld, maybe not well.

No, I don't think so. It will weaken the member greatly.

I think so, too. If it works as I think it can, it will be quite a project.

You either have to get

But I don't want to have to go down to the level of digging iron ore, building a huge fire, etc.

That was the information I was hoping to get here.

Geez. And all I asked for was the the name of a supplier of some steel plates with holes in them.

Just as a reference point.

This weekend I went by a fire tower. This was supported by an angle iron frame.

The verticals were spliced with smaller angles place inside the large angles. The horizontal and diagonal pieces were bolted to the vertical angles. There were no junction plates that I could see.

Howard

Yaaa.. Arrgggg.

I have a small drill press, a small welder, and a hack saw.

That is going to be a lot of work.

Cutting the angles. Drilling the angles.

If I gotta do it, I gotta do it, but I still believe that somewhere are the pieces that will cut the job to 1/10 of all that work.

You're wrong. But it's clear from your replies you're not interested in anything anyone here has to say.

Joel. phx

"Geez. And all I asked for was the the name of a supplier of some steel plates with holes in them."

And where have you looked?

On Mon, 16 Aug 2004 11:45:15 -0400, "Al Smith" vaguely proposed a theory ......and in reply I say!:

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Aaaah! Fercrissake!

***************************************************** Marriage. Where two people decide to get together so that neither of them can do what they want to because of the other one.

Al,

Go to

and search on "steel supplier". I got 1,580,000 hits in .80 seconds. Surely you have .80 seconds to devote to this undertaking. Call one of the steel suppliers and ask them for "steel plates with holes in them." No doubt they will ask you a bunch of stupid questions that will upset you. Persevere until you find what you want. When I search on "hole suppliers" I only got 304,000 hits in .28 seconds. I think looking for steel with holes in it will yield more fruit than looking for holes with steel around it, but I could be wrong.

If you live in a medium sized town you probably have 1 or 2 steel suppliers locally. You can try the Yellow Pages as well. That's what I do when I want to buy something locally.

George

...

...

You might be right ~ google for ""steel with holes" shows 382 hits, vs only 232 for "holes with steel" ~ or maybe not, since not too many of the former hits seem relevant. There's an interesting reference on its fourth page:

some weird welding; the story, including bits like `His law of welding was, "Never lose the bead [...] even if you catch fire. Just keep welding, someone will put you out."' but otherwise slim pickings. In contrast, the third hit from "holes with steel" actually is relevant ("Sam drove to the site in his rickety pickup truck, with Pfeifer (left) and Busch in back, sitting atop cases of dynamite with blasting caps jingling in their pockets. At Sam's direction, the two maintained a driftwood fire, heating immense steel chisels until they glowed red, and with sledgehammers, pounded the sizzling chisels into the permafrost.") to something or other.

Now, some gratuitous items of advice for the OP, Al Smith --

1. Here are some plates, but maybe not heavy enough, or too expensive, etc:
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2. If you want to weld (to attach plates) why not just weld the tower together instead of bolting it?

1. If you want to cut metal on the cheap, here's a (on sale) bandsaw -
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   the following drill press probably can drill 1/2" holes ok -
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1. As your tower is only 20' high, you could just buy a 40' length of

3-inch or 4-inch schedule 40 steel pipe - available most anywhere - and cut off the right length and use that as a tower without additional bother.

1. Apparently you are concerned that drilling into your 2.5"x2.5"x3/16" angle iron will weaken it, and you want to weld plates on so you can bolt parts together via the plates. While drilled holes will weaken the steel, the main effect will be that it bends easier near holes. But if your structure has suitable triangles it won't bend before the metal tears. If you put 1/2" holes near the midline of a side, so there is about 1" of border, tearout should be not much more of a problem than bolt shear on this size of tower, and unless you are a good welder, no more of a problem than welded parts breaking off.

-jiw

the

sledgehammers, pounded the sizzling chisels into the permafrost.") to something or other.

Those plates could work. Unfortunately, there was no length, width, nor thinkness of the plates. Also, the diameter of the holes were not specified. Could one find those as scrap anywhere?

That is a fallback option. However, for a host of reasons, the ability to disassemble is preferred. If I can't do it, then I'll weld the whole thing.

Have you tried this thing?

I have a drill press

This is a design experiment. There is a reason for everything I am attempting. Besides, the pipe must weigh a ton, and I would have to use an anchoring system different from what I have in mind.

Right, that is what I am looking for, but I can't find anything, yet.

While drilled holes will weaken the steel,

Right. I thought it would be easier and cheaper to find metal with pre-drilled wholes. Haven't found the source yet. Soon, I'll just have to get some metal and start making my own.

What did the steel and fence suppliers say when you called, "no, we don't sell punched plate for making fence brackets"?