Technical Fabrication Table Ideas

Good for you. It looks like you have more indoor space than my entire property consists of. Not complaining. It is what I have to deal with. A wife with health issues and a putting a kid threw collage takes all the extra money available. You can read between the lines. If it is meant to be, I`ll have a property with a nice house and a good sized shop. If not, I am content to what I have now. But I`m happy to be self employed. It`s not the size of a shop but what one gets done in the space provided to them is what counts.

 

here are photos of the bench I posted earlier all finished.

 

Do you picnic in the shop or use a forklift to move it outside?

 

I have a fuckin HUGE one, 32' × 53' and 8" thick. Holds up to 7 cars!!









Sometimes I just can't help myself...

 

My friend has a frame table used to build '32 Ford frames. $300. Located in Central New York 13346. 315-749-4649

 

My fab table is whatever size the previous owner decided on. I cant devote the $ to building my own.
Industrial auctions are worth watching, I bought a 4x12 and 2 4x4's. Selling one of the 4x4's locally covered most of the cost for all.

"Junk collectors" I keep a few sets of the plastic saw horses and 4x4 or smaller sheets of osb. Set that up next to the project. When the project is over that gets cleared off and put away.

 

I have not started on mine yet, but I have been thinking about it for a long time and it's in the budget for this year, so hopefully in the next few months I can get started on it. I am limited on floor space (around 500 square feet) in the main garage bay, so that is a huge consideration in my design.

My basic concept is so build 3 or 4 shallow but wide tables that can be pushed up against the wall and used as regular workbenches or small welding tables, or be pulled out and strung together using box tube through a receiver sleeve. Then I can have it be whatever length I want by however wide I make the individual tables. The table (s) on the inside can be repositioned within the whole assembly to mock up or fixture whatever is needed.

I plan on being 24" deep (maybe up to 30") and probably 5' wide, allowing for simple hub fixtures to hold an axle in place. It seems like the standard is 5/8 plate with 5/8 holes on a 2" or 4" grid, so that's what I will do so I can use off the shelf tooling. Most will be a 4" pattern, with the 2" used in select spaces to save time on drilling.

Structure wise I will use plate steel 4"+ tall or C Channel welded or bolted underneath running the short way across the table. together. Tying those together would be a largish diameter (3"?) round tube on the center of the long axis. This will act as a torque tube keeping the whole table on one plane.

Below that would be 3" box tube running the long direction. This will act as the sleeve to string the tables together using 2" box tube. Tables will need to be leveled individually, and as a unit when used together. I just don't think I can reasonably get enough strength to not do it that way unless I go to a very large beam of some sort.

The legs will come off allowing the table to be used at a low height or at 38-40" tall bench height. I plan on using an engine hoist (eye bolt hole in center of table) to lift it up off of the legs when needed.

Lots of details to work out, but steel is relatively cheap right now, so it seems like a good time to do it.

 

Here are some photos of the frame table. It is sitting on its side here. The top surface is 4'x 8' and is very heavy.