I recently saw what my memory tells me was hot rolled steel 1/2" bars formed into a square woven mesh dang near 3" square, at a recycler. The guy I was with told me they were for some farm animal, can't remember, hogs or bulls or something. I googled on "livestock panels" yesterday and saw a variety, lot of searching. But I certainly saw stuff yesterday up to 3/8". My point is it might be worth an hour's online searching. Hey, the weather's crap outside anyway, right?
GWE
Could you get away with a 1/2" conduit bender, or fabricate a similar hand bender with a smaller radius?
The last time I checked, new metal shopping carts were about $300 each, by the thousand. A local Save-A-Lot grocery store just received refurbished plastic carts with new tires on the wheels, and die cut labels covering the name of the original chain that owned them.
Well, if you dont have to actually weave it- then, as Emily Latella used to say, "never mind". I was all set to email you pics of the die and a shot of the finished mesh, but you dont need it now.
As far as cut and weld goes, I do a lot of that, too, in 1/2" round. Pretty important to cut your filler pieces all exactly the same length- with mild, we use a cold saw, but for stainless, I have to use either the ironworker or the bandsaw. The ironworker leaves a deformed end, but its fast- as long as you are using a stop, they all come out the same length. Then, assuming you will be welding all the way around each joint, the crushed end is no biggie. The bandsaw makes perfect piecs, but boy, is it slow. We do this for very short pieces, or sometimes precurved parts- I will roll a curve in a long piece, then cut parts from the curved piece.
If you are making a hundred or two of these a year, you sure wont want to use a conduit bender or an old piece of pipe to bend em. You will want to prebend the parts for the corners before welding, of course, but my recomendation is to buy a real hossfeld bender. $800 new, for the basic die sets, which is plenty to reliably bend 1/2" round. It comes with stops for length and degree of bend, and for an extra 25 bucks or so, American bender will sell you a handy sticker with bend degrees printed on it.
If you are not making enough money off a hundred of these a year to slip in a hossfeld bender, you underbid the job.
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