Concrete floor modifications

One tactic in larger shops is to set railroad rail upside down after rebar studs are welded on the top of the rail. Along with this you need to go down with a foot of concrete with more reinforcing bar. In many cases all that is required is six inch square pieces of one inch plate with several rebar studs set under and into a concrete footing. Shipyards often go for full length strips but for general fabrication just imbed pads in a five or six foot grid is good enough. A length of channel will tend to flex and break away from the concrete at the toe of the channel. A one inch plate till have an inch of concrete next to its edge so the concrete is less likely to flake away. Certainly invest in high strength ready mix. It only cost me an extra five dollars a cubic metre. I thought I would have to pay twenty or thirty percent more. Not so. Randy
Anyone here have any suggestions for inserts in a concrete floor? I am planning to recap the floor in my shop and would like to here ideas from others who weld. What types of inserts do you recommend? I was thinking of incorporating a couple channels on edge set flush with the floor to tack to. Has anyone here preplanned for these things? Has anyone tried epoxy floor finishes in an area used for welding?

expoxy floor for hot sparks and metals sounds bad.
you want channels in the floor so you can weld to?? what are you welding to it??

A cheaper alternative to headed welded studs is structural bolts - get some 5/8" or 3/4" x 4" bolts and weld the base (threaded end) to your plate. For pure pullout, the failure area is a cone/pyramid (sides at a 1:1) from the head of the studs up. Definately stronger than an imbedded channel.
-Rich

Steel imbeds in the floor are useful for a variety of things. a) you can tack your steel horses to the floor to prevent shifting when you are jigging up. b) you can tack weld tube, channel, or angle frames to the floor at certain locations then using other locations and wedge clips drive the frame into square. c) you can remove or put twist into a frame by tacking one corner down and then lifting against the floor to lift an opposite corner. This is helpful if you are building a sweeping staircase that has stringers not rolled quite on spec. d) you can weld a clip to the floor and attach a com-a-long to the clip then pull down on a truss while the ends are supported on horses. Don't pull down too hard unless you have a good anchor or you will pull the imbed out of the floor. Hmmm. How do I know this one... Don't ask. Randy
expoxy floor for hot sparks and metals sounds bad.
you want channels in the floor so you can weld to?? what are you welding to it??

One of my former employers embedded a frame made of two 12" I-beams by 20 feet long in the floor of a building addition made while I worked there. We made roll-off truck lifts and used the rails occasionally. IIRC, we put cross members in the frame to give extra surface to pull against but don't remember (this was about 1984-5) if we added some plates to the lower flanges. When I built my shop, I added a square socket in the floor to give me an anchor point and place to set various post tools. Works pretty good.
Jerry
Buck L. wrote:

You have to take into account the type of work you will be doing. You dont want something you can pull out of the floor nor do you want to spend more money on it than you have to. If you use I beams alway tack to it in the middle of the beam where the strength is. If your are not sure this rule will aways be folloewd it will need additional bracing./stiffening.

Might be a good time to take care of that annoying neighbor or pesky brother in law : )
JTMcC.
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