More Sign Holder progress

As I showed in yesterday's installment, I had to trim back the support Ts in order to allow the support arms to swing freely. It took a while to get the measurements for the cuts, but I came up with good dimensions for the cut. 

Here's how it looks:

The way the end looks now:

The new gap to allow the swing:

The gap is 1/4" and the length of the hypotenuse of the triangle that I trimmed off is 3/4". It's just enough and doesn't even look too bad.

The other issue I am running into is a bit of galling near the 2" tube:

 The type of aluminum selected for this piece is prone to this, but I'm taking care of the issue by smoothing  everything out and will apply some light grease after everything is assembled. 

Tomorrow's task will be trimming up the other side to allow the support arms to swing 180*. Basically I'll be doing the same thing as the other side:

Custom sign holders nearing completion!

Now that the shop is mostly taken care of, I can get back to actually making progress on projects!

I had to cut two more pieces of 2" wide plate as braces for  the sign frame:

Those pieces started out as one piece of 4"x8'x3/16" plate. I cut the plate to the length I needed ( 26 1/2") and then cut it down the middle with my bandsaw. It took a while, but with good layout and a steady hand, I am impressed with how nicely the ended up being.

Then it was time for some grinding. As and welder who prides themselves on making good looking and strong welds, it hurts a bit when you have to grind the welds down for aesthetic or, in this case, functionality. Here is what I had to do:

Since the T-shaped piece is going to have the sign frame support tubes swing around it, the welds had to be ground flush so that the side plates would clear.

Now I am showing off why I prefer to have good clamping areas on all work benches:

It just makes your life so much easier to have a solid place to clamp what you are working on down so you can not worry about holding things. Solid clamping makes for a much safer work environment. 

After grinding down the welds, I center punched the previously marked spots for the pivot and locking holes:

This is the tool I use for all my center punching:

Even though it is a Starrett, it is extremely reasonably priced. The tips are replaceable, though I haven't had to replace the original in the . . . 3 or so years I've been using it, marking many thousands of holes to be drilled. You can also adjust the tension which effects the effort and punch depth. I love it. If you want to make your layout and drilling much more precise, get an automatic center punch! It is very much worth it.

Once I got the holes marked, it is time to drill. Now here is a not about drill press safety:

If you don't have a piece that is long enough to rest against the upright of your drill press, put a stop on the dang work table. As you can see above, it is nothing fancy, but it is necessary! You can severely injure yourself, or, more importantly, ruin the piece you are drilling if it slips from your hands as you are drilling. The worst time for it to slip is when the bit is about to break through, as this is when the bit is most likely to grab the piece and spin it, breaking the bit, your hands/fingers/workpiece.

I finished drilling the pilot holes after being annoyed that my baby sized drill press didn't have enough stroke to drill all the way through the sides of the 2" box tube. I had to mark the other side of the tube and go through the whole process again. *le sigh*

Anyway, I finished getting the holes drilled and then cut the tube supports to the general length needed:

I had to file down the insides of the tube so that the supports would be able to fit around the hole:

I finished the supports to length on my sander, then tapped them into place:

The reason why I am bothering with this is that the support Ts are going to be the most stressed member of this whole construction. Adding in the tube to couple the sides together will greatly increase torsional rigidity which will help cope with with loads from the large vinyl sign.

The next task was to start drilling out holes on the sign frame supports:

This is where my drill press decided to stop working. Again. I am pretty stumped as to why, but I will figure it out or get another one as soon as I have the cash in hand to do it.

Always support your work! I would never have been able to pop 1/2" holes in the thin support plates had I not been clever and used the Ts to support the ends of the plates:

This is the assembly bolted together:

Do note that I will have to trim the corner of the T and also the corner of the plates in order to clear everything when the entire assembly swings. I left them square to make it easier to work on everything, but will make the final cuts when I know everything else fits as perfectly as posible. 

Today was a pain in the . . . everything.

Today, my TIG welder decided to throw a temper tantrum. I'm thinking that something might have gotten knocked around when I moved it to the new shop. I've eliminated just about everything else and have finally gotten some decent beads.

First order of business, the sign holder frames:

Hmmm . . . I wonder if the floor is level?

Yeah . . . Of course not. heh

Solution:

Using the plate and flat-face clamps keeps the pieces generally in place. Also, I am welding the sides as per the customer's request so he can fit poles or fasten attention getting things to the sides of the sign holder. Normally, I don't leave ends open.

First one welded together:

I got the second one welded up then moved on to making sure all the pieces I have fit together correctly:

I took a break and wanted to figure out WTF was going on with my welder. For some reason, I was getting a LOT of crud in the welds even after sanding, acetone, wire brushing with a stainless steel wire brush only used for aluminum and then acetone AGAIN. I checked my ground connections, torch connections, gas lines, adjusted gas pressures, played with the frequency and balance, found this:

moved up to 1/8" tungsten (thought I am not a fan of the type I am using for aluminum, but it works decently enough it seems) and after all that, I FINALLY started to get something resembling decent:

I got a bit hot on this joint:

The sign frame is going to get welded into the slot formed between the upright angles and the tab welded to the end of the box:

First on the right, last on the left:

Much better color on the last one, showing much improved weld quality:

Funky 1/8" tungsten:

 Odd color, but a really nice ball at 125A dialed in, so it isn't all bad. 

Aluminuminuminuminum.

More layout! I figured out how to use the 4" wide cuts of the 3/16" plate to make the swing arm support plates:

I make too many mistakes to point out, but I happened to get a pic of this one:

I eventually got my head wrapped around where I didn't screw up on the last one. LOL! 

I busted out my handy band saw and stand to cut the pieces out:

Then I stacked them, marked them and pilot drilled them:

After that, I cleaned up everything with a wire brush and got the first piece fit up:

I had some issues when getting to welding. This was the first time I had gotten my TIG welder running since the move. I was expecting the aluminum to weld pretty effing clean, but . . . surprise surprise surprise! No. I actually had quite a lot of issues getting welds started, and this was after wire brushing twice, cleaning with acetone and making sure I didn't touch anything with my bare hands.

Problems aside, I can't complain about this:

Notice the void:

That isn't in a critical area, so I am not worried too much about it, but it certainly is annoying to me. I've had crap cast aluminum weld handle better than this. heh

Here's the crud after a pass, before wire brushing:

 I love brushed metal finishes:

One pretty darn good run :

Everything is matching up really well thanks to good prep and a solid plan:

The tube is thick enough to not have had any bubbling on the inside:

My little setup, for now:

I need to finish this project up tomorrow. That's the plan, anyway. heh

Google SketchUp, A Newb Review

This morning I met up with a prospective client. I was a little apprehensive about the whole thing since I hadn't met this guy before, but, ya gotta take a chance, right? The meeting went well. We bounced ideas back and forth. It was productive. He wants two sign frames that can fold into the trailer "wings" simply. Speed of setup is his main concern, keeping weight down and maximizing strength is mine. I came away with a good idea of what to do, but, having to draw up a plan by hand is pretty tedious and is no where near precise as what you can do with CAD or Computer Aided Design or even Cardboard Aided Design. A friend told me to try Google SketchUp. So, I watched some tutorial videos and said, to myself, "Self, I can do this. Okay . . . GO!" And I did. It took me a few tries, but this is what I ended up with for the afternoon and evening.

Let me see if I can find a pic of what I am talking about . . . 

It's not a great picture, but this is similar:

The trailer I will be doing these for has even wider "wings" that open upwards. The doors are made from a frame of likely 1"x1" aluminum tubing. The strange thing is that even though the doors are about the same size, the internal framing is not made evenly. The customer wanted an even look to the supports, so I had to come up with a way to mount the signs securely by spreading the load over as wide an area as possible. I'm pretty sure I've done that.

This is the underneath view:

 No, I have no idea why I did this one first. LOL! The wide horizontal plate is going to get bolted to the actual frame of the door. It is eight feet wide. The frame of the sign itself is slightly shorter as it has to clear the door supports and some other odds and ends.

Here's the front view:

The sign itself is made of vinyl and will be grommeted and bungeed to the frame. The straps you see are going to help stabilize the sign by transferring wind loads to more points on the frame and make the frame more rigid.

Another view, showing more of the support structure:

Detail of the support:

The idea is that the frame will swing under the door and lock into place with simple pins making it fast and safe to open the doors and display the signs. The swinging part isn't completely modeled yet, as I have to angle some corners so things will actually clear.

All the holes are 1/2". The bigger box tubing is 2". The thinner tubbing is 1" square. All the reinforcements and stiffeners are 3/16" plate, and on the forward point where the bigger tube meets teh smaller tube, the plate is set back from the edges in order to get enough weld on the corners to stiffen up the whole thing tremendously. I am also likely going to add some bracing to the "swing plates" and also to the point where the supports are actually welded to the backing plate.

Why bother? Because I have an accurate model and can figure out exactly how much material I need to order, especially with two of these things to build. That's a powerful tool in anyone's belt. I plan to use it more often, and I'll get faster the more I use it. I'd recommend checking it out. There are limitations on the free version, but, if you aren't doing anything crazy, I don't think it will matter all that much.