Custom Welding Cart

Background:

Ive been taking a welding class at my highschool for 3 years now, and have mainly practiced industrial welding (stick on 1/2" carbon steel coupons) and have gotten really good at it. Ive always been into cars and love watching fabrication videos on youtube and thought I want to do that so after talking about it for a year finally for my 18th birthday my dad got me a tig welder. i am overjoyed and love welding. it is honestly a passion of mine that i hope to keep the fire burning inside me forever. having an idea, then wokring with my hands to create something out of nothing is a feeling like no other.

Design:

After i got my welder and my first bottle of gas i knew i needed to make a portable, compact solution to store and use it. From that idea my custom welding cart was born. I first researched others ideas in order to get a good sense of what the best solution was for the most people and go from there. I designed the frame first in Fusion 360, a software i get access to for free becuase i am a student. After that, i sought out some scrap metal to make my cart out of. I called about 5 metal/welding buisnesses in my small college town before getting directions to a cnc waterjet place about an hour away that had some scraps. Jonah, if you are reading this thank you so much ofr beliving in a young kid with passion. You gave me the firewood to grow this fire into a bonfire. Jonah gave me 8 42" long 1.5" thick 1/8" wall stainless steel square tube that was scraped becuase it was marked up and not the prettiest. I filled in any grind marks with my welder, smoothed them back down with my grinder, restoring them to their former glory. From those 8 initial peices, i used 6 of them to make my welding cart.
Welding the actual frame was another challenge however.
Warping is a fabriactors biggest enemy. especially a beginner, like me. After watching a handful of videos and reading some articles i felt i was ready to tackle welding the frame out.

Post-project thoughts:

a whole lot more than i can write about here and not bore you. ill boil it down to this: you dont know what you dont know, as my dad says a lot to me. exsperience has to be learned somehow and even though im going ot look back in 6months to 5 years i will always have a way i couldve done it better but it was a great place to start. It still is very functional and overengineered for what it is but i am proud of it.



Skills:
Welding
Fusion 360
3d design

Pictures: