I would not bother with all that sheet and rubber. Fit some bar or tube front to back that the side lips of the trays can run on. You also gain extra storage capacity for each tray as there are no tubes across the tops which also stops stuff getting stuck against the tubes.

Or just get three second hand Bisley draw units and build a frame to take those. If you go for one each of 1", 2" and 3" draw heights the smallest will do for cutters, taps & dies etc. Meduim for collets and small tooling, largest for what's left. You also get a closed front so your draws don't fill with swarf and cast iron dust like open trays will.

I would not try to learn to weld using a cheap gas less unit. MIG if you wish, use CO2 from the local pub and .6 wire. As for 200/250A why stop there go for a 375A unit. You will NOT get 200A from a 13A plug, it will need about 21A. With small stick inverters quite cheap,120/160A, that and 2mm rods will teach you what to look for and if poor it will look it. Read up and pay special attention to the weld pool, this will show how your doing. Look at the weld as it cools, if there are bright spots you have inclusions of slag. If you blow holes turn the power UP, the metal will flow and you move on, if the power is not high enough you will dwell on the spot, there will be to much heat and – a hole ! An auto darkening helmet is good as your learning and will save you from the VERY PAINFUL condition as arc eye. If your an inteligent man you will only ever suffer from this once !

MIG welding in untrailed hands is VERY dangerous if a load bearing member. The picture shows a  trailer susspension mounting plate ! Only 6 hours after it was fitted it failed, causing a road accident, as the suspention,hub, wheel and tyre came off ! As can be seen there is almost NO penetration, the weld bead just sitting on top of the mill scale, though LOOKING OK. This was a commercially made unit,  though some  staff plainly couldn't weld. Now you see the reason for my first sentence !

Noel.

Edited By noel shelley on 28/05/2023 19:59:31

I think you're mad.

That's a lot of expensive material and time just to build some basic, open shelves. Save yourself the hassle and enrol on a short welding course. If you must build something, make a bench: four legs and two rectangles with ply coverings will give enough practice of welding stuff together that stays straight/square(not as easy as it sounds, and your shelf design will be tricky to manage that) and be properly useful. An important engineering skill is to not make things more complicated than is absolutely necessary. Important, and hard to learn!

I wouldn't consider a gasless MIG either; use a proper one, or a cheap inverter stick machine. That one you've shown looks a bit underpowered/expensive too LINK

IF you wish to learn to weld then 20mm tube is not the place to start ! Buy a GOOD secondhand MIG machine and use CO2 – many will say it will not be good but for 25 years it was all I used and got good results on thin material as a job of work ! 0.6mm wire for thin material, not 0.8mm. Cheap migs have very poor wire feed units, bad if your skilled and almost impossible to use if learning. How do I know ? I was lucky, I started with a BOC Autolynx, one of the best smallish migs ever made (£750, in 1975) and have 2 cheap migs in the shed, both given to me by people who could not use them, I can't say I had much success either. I still have the Autolynx !

IF you really want to learn to weld then visit a local fabricator and get an assortment of off cuts in varring thicknesses and buy the best machine you can afford. It will take quite a while to learn !

Good Luck Noel

Beginner tip

At first you believe that a neat weld is good welding and that's what you set as an objective, but you can see that the neat bead in the picture above was useless

The most important thing for hobby welding is PENETRATION, melt that metal and fuse it together

The blue plate in the picture would be your main difficult target because it's much harder to penetrate a heat losing flat metal plate. The edge of the second (missing) plate will melt/weld far more easily so most of your amps need to get fired right into the flat blue plate and this penetrating bead fuses with the edge of the missing upper plate

But it takes quite a long time and a lot of practice to build experience and confidence, even for non critical hobby welding

They're your resources, so go ahead. When you've built it give us a report on how it went, and what you learnt.

There's no way I'd have a rack of open trays in a workshop where material is being cut, ground, machined, welded painted or even assembled. Why not make the slides for your trays out of angle instead of tube? You'll get the same amount of welding practice, but the finished item will work better.

The idea of hanging a long, 450kg lathe from a mobile engine crane to place it on the stand on my own worries me. Having used them, I wouldn't do it. Without some means of steadying each end while moving and operating the crane, it's very easy for the whole lot to tip over. My crane was stolen, and I haven't replaced it because it takes up too much space for the infrequent use it gets. I know at least three people I can borrow one from if needed, and they're not difficult to hire.

I do agree with you about buying new instead of trying to find a secondhand machine though!

Cheap and new welder – I'd be tempted by Clark. They have a good reputation and all spares ready to hand at machine mart. The quality of the wire feed is important – and Clark have a good reputation there.

I switched from CO2 to proper gas and the difference was significant. If you are welding something valuable or important or difficult then get proper gas.

If all you plan to do is flux cored, then why not Stick? Stick is always handy to have.

We actually have a thread in here about a crated lathe being moved up a beam ramp onto its workbench

Can't remember who posted it though, there were pictures and everything and it was very competently done

Hi, as said, a crazy idea, but what you need to do when you start practising your welding, is to learn how to control distortion, because I think you might well get a fair bit on your design. You'd be better off saving your money on the welder and get some hollow tube connectors Metals 4U square tube connectors.

Like Buffer said, you may well wonder why you started it in the first place.

Regards Nick.

Edited By Nicholas Farr on 29/05/2023 16:41:31

if i read this right you are going to buy a welder to learn to weld to make a hoist to move one lathe. a hoist you most likely will hardly ever use.i hardly ever used my hoist when i was repairing cars its just a waste of space now. i would recommend renting one.

Interesting Bill, I'd not actually seen the trays before but that is how I suggested they be supported in the first reply. Even if the OP's frame were not slotted the runner material could be screwed on which would allow for some easy adjustment of spacing if a row of holes were drilled in the uprights.

Even if all welding the "open" front that the side runners give means that each end and divider could be welded up on a flat surface making it a lot easier to keep things true and then you only need to weld on the two top and bottom rains that run full width. Bit of bracing at the back and the job is done.