Welding Tips and Tricks

Purchased a Metric version of the BuildPro Max 2550x1250 here in the uk.

While setting up I noticed the surface finish looks more like a belt sander that has chatted across the surface than a precision ground surface...

As I don’t live in the States so I have nothing to compare this too, other than all the videos where the surfaces look like machines surfaces... can someone put my mind to rest this is normal quality of buildpro?

There are burn marks where it looks like they tried to take too much off too quick, but the chatter marks look terrible.

My other red flag is that the paperwork was all Chinese with the surface measurements for calibration not in English, makes me wonder if this is same table that is for USA market...

Can you help me put my mind to rest?

I wonder if the panels that are darker in colour have had more heat put through them.

I’ve emailed stronghand/buildpro with serial number to check its a genuine item.

superclarkey wrote: I’ve emailed stronghand/buildpro with serial number to check its a genuine item.

This is probably your best first move, is the table flat and did it go together as is should?

I also had a few QA issues with my buildpro, but mostly with the tooling. There was some shipping damage to the table, but that was another matter. I also noticed a piece of chinese newspaper in one of the tooling packs that likely made it's way in there mistakenly. I did check it to see if a chinese worker had scrawled some sort of HELP message on it.

For the incredibly high prices of both the table and the tooling, I was quite picky with my own QA inspection and asked the vendor to provide replacements for anything that was less than adequate given the advertised specs, and of course the pricing...which they promptly did.

My table plates do have a smooth ground finish...looks like yours may have missed a QA cycle.

LtBadd wrote:

superclarkey wrote: I’ve emailed stronghand/buildpro with serial number to check its a genuine item.

This is probably your best first move, is the table flat and did it go together as is should?

It came fully built, I stripped it down as many plates where too high or looked low in relation to each other.. found loads of metal shavings between plates and machine ways, I’ve cleaned them out but not put the table back together yet as I was a little taken back by the finish of the plates.

So will hold judgment how flat it is, however I measured the surfaces with a dial gauge and the peaks and dips of each machining mark is around 0.02mm, I understand that the average flatness is more important.. but I do wonder how it will wear.

Its a rough finish, will measure the RA and RZ when I get a bit more time with the table.

If I go back to the supplier they are just going to say “no one else has had a problem” lol kinda the reason I need to know if this is normal finish or I’ve been screwed.

Spartan wrote:I also had a few QA issues with my buildpro, but mostly with the tooling. There was some shipping damage to the table, but that was another matter. I also noticed a piece of chinese newspaper in one of the tooling packs that likely made it's way in there mistakenly. I did check it to see if a chinese worker had scrawled some sort of HELP message on it.

For the incredibly high prices of both the table and the tooling, I was quite picky with my own QA inspection and asked the vendor to provide replacements for anything that was less than adequate given the advertised specs, and of course the pricing...which they promptly did.

My table plates do have a smooth ground finish...looks like yours may have missed a QA cycle.

I hear what your saying, but not being in the states getting a replacement is a six months turn around so options will be “keep it” or “refund”, that will be only two options.

Only thing I will say is the tables are around £3500 here, whereas I can see a similar sized table seems to be allot more over there, so I wonder if its not a QC thing but more of a cost cutting exercise...

EDIT: just realised they also do Aluminium top plates too, thought they where all steel like this one, does that make a difference to the finish?

Compared to our buildpro table here at the shop that does seem rough. Our finish is coarse, but no chatter or skipping.
It's definitely not very flat compared to decent surface grinding as shown by the shiny high spots after stoning.. but our table definitely seemed adequately flat for a welding fixture surface.

Keeping a routine of cleaning surface rust and stoning away the high spots is a really good idea as it will get dinged up, especially in my shop where I'm not the only one who uses it.

-dudley

Pics for comparison;

dudley wrote:Compared to our buildpro table here at the shop that does seem rough. Our finish is coarse, but no chatter or skipping.
It's definitely not very flat compared to decent surface grinding as shown by the shiny high spots after stoning.. but our table definitely seemed adequately flat for a welding fixture surface.

Keeping a routine of cleaning surface rust and stoning away the high spots is a really good idea as it will get dinged up, especially in my shop where I'm not the only one who uses it.

-dudley

Pics for comparison;

20201019_170723.jpg

20201019_171530.jpg

Thank you for taking the time to share, clearly the table I’ve purchased is poor quality finish which is a shame.

Feel like the surface is going to be hard to maintain, oh well it is what it is.

Might ask a machine shop what it would cost to sort it...

Stronghand / buildpro in the states hasn’t come back to me, so guess its not their problem.

superclarkey wrote:
Thank you for taking the time to share, clearly the table I’ve purchased is poor quality finish which is a shame.

Feel like the surface is going to be hard to maintain, oh well it is what it is.

Might ask a machine shop what it would cost to sort it...

Stronghand / buildpro in the states hasn’t come back to me, so guess its not their problem.

I don't think that the surface finish will matter much during use, as long as the table is flat and parallel and there aren't any mismatches between plates. I understand your frustration, but I hope the function will outweigh the annoyance of the rough grinding. These tables are awesome in my experience.

I'm a big fan of all the fixturing components and how modular the entire system is.. It felt like a big purchase when we bought our table, but I wouldn't want to work without it anymore.

Building up the clamps, squares and components is possibly a bigger investment than the table itself.

One note regarding asking a machine shop to re-grind the surfaces, you don't want to remove enough material that it changes the thickness to the point where the standard ball-lock bolts won't work. If you're really unhappy you might want to try and exchange the plates or the whole table itself.

dudley wrote:

superclarkey wrote:
Thank you for taking the time to share, clearly the table I’ve purchased is poor quality finish which is a shame.

Feel like the surface is going to be hard to maintain, oh well it is what it is.

Might ask a machine shop what it would cost to sort it...

Stronghand / buildpro in the states hasn’t come back to me, so guess its not their problem.

I don't think that the surface finish will matter much during use, as long as the table is flat and parallel and there aren't any mismatches between plates. I understand your frustration, but I hope the function will outweigh the annoyance of the rough grinding. These tables are awesome in my experience.

I'm a big fan of all the fixturing components and how modular the entire system is.. It felt like a big purchase when we bought our table, but I wouldn't want to work without it anymore.

Building up the clamps, squares and components is possibly a bigger investment than the table itself.

One note regarding asking a machine shop to re-grind the surfaces, you don't want to remove enough material that it changes the thickness to the point where the standard ball-lock bolts won't work. If you're really unhappy you might want to try and exchange the plates or the whole table itself.

I totally agree with what your saying, I 100% get its not a surface plate, and I understand that ups and downs in the surface (Rz) doesn't matter as long as the average is flat, so I will just try it and see how I get on, if I don't see any problems I will ignore it...

I'm a motorsport workshop, so the table will be taken care off, so its not going to be smashed about with massive lumps of steel, it will be light duty work so it should last a long time.

I feel like the price was right and as you say I'm looking to spend more on the fixtures and fittings then the table, so in a way it doesn't matter as long as it works... But you can see how I was scratching my head when it arrived as its a bit of a crappy finish when its meant to be "precision ground" and looks like a kid with a sand-belt on a long stick did it from the next room. The other tables I looked at which where £10k plus, they lacked the tooling, this is the main reason I went for this over anything else.

I will hold judgement until its all level and set up and I use it for the first time, just guess my expectations where too high for the finish.

Every serious table will have a +- .0000? . If it’s within tolerance but visible than it’s just something you have to deal with. At best you might be able to prove that some of the low spots are over tolerance, guess then they might owe you a plate or two.

Stronghand got back to me and said “it seems to be genuine”

Confidence inspiring...

Poland308 wrote:Every serious table will have a +- .0000? . If it’s within tolerance but visible than it’s just something you have to deal with. At best you might be able to prove that some of the low spots are over tolerance, guess then they might owe you a plate or two.

And to measure to that precision, you need pretty decent tooling and instruments. If it were me, I'd run some decent honing stones over it (the entire surface) to insure I removed any manufacturing abnormalities if I were to rely on the surface flatness anyway.

This too would likely yield revealing any low spots. It's either that or you print the surface with a machined-flat, scraped straight edge blued up with Dykem

cj737 wrote:

Poland308 wrote:Every serious table will have a +- .0000? . If it’s within tolerance but visible than it’s just something you have to deal with. At best you might be able to prove that some of the low spots are over tolerance, guess then they might owe you a plate or two.

And to measure to that precision, you need pretty decent tooling and instruments. If it were me, I'd run some decent honing stones over it (the entire surface) to insure I removed any manufacturing abnormalities if I were to rely on the surface flatness anyway.

This too would likely yield revealing any low spots. It's either that or you print the surface with a machined-flat, scraped straight edge blued up with Dykem

I don't need a precision ground plate, hehe, I get its only a welding table at the end of the day, but my main concern was how poor the finish was. If you get weld splatter on it and you have to flat it, its going to get crap very quickly because you'll not be able to remove the splatter marks without flatting the whole area, so its going to get very messy very quickly. I wanted to use the table to take photo's of products on too, so this ruins that idea a bit depending on how it wears.

I did take a surface ground stone to the surface and it just contacts the high spots in the marks, I wasn't able to "flat it" so its it would take some work to get it down to a level surface.

as no wheels came with the unit I'm still yet to get it into its proper place and find out if the table is actually flat yet.



Going to use it as it is, decided I'm not going to invest into the tooling for the table and just use it as a big bench for laying out stuff etc,

For a welding table you're right, it doesn't need to be that flat.

You can spray down the surface with Anti Spatter products to help protect it and make welding a lot less messy.

I had to purchased castors separately, didn’t have any plates so knocked a quick drawing up for my laser cutters..
Will weld a nut in the middle and then some m20 thread bar locked into that which will go up into the legs... the plan is to level the table I can use my feet to turn the castor plate while the wheel stays still and it will higher or lower the table.
Hopefully that shows my intentions. Welded nut down to plate then lock nut on top to hold thread from spinning. Then will have another lock nut on table leg to nip it down once perfect height.

Love the efficiency of the 3/8 shim nuts holding up the wheel.

Poland308 wrote:Love the efficiency of the 3/8 shim nuts holding up the wheel.

I have to admit I has to work out what 3/8 was in metric as it had no meaning to me lol those nuts are 15mm (m20x2.5) thick so gives some sense of scale, they are a bit overkill lol at 600kg per wheel load capacity.

Will drop a picture of when the wheels are on and set up

All welded up ready for painting.
Having pride even in the smallest of jobs
They work really well, very happy how they have turned out! Yes need to paint my floor haha

Excellent work there!!

Here are some more images of the surface, I've tried to edit the photos so that you can see the marks a little better.

After measuring the table, all the centres are high, going to have to shim the ends up by 0.005 min, and measuring the ups and down (the marks you can see) measure about 0.02mm.

You can see w3here I've taken a surface stone that has been surface ground to the top of each run, its rubbed the high point off and as you can see its not sorted, but you can see where the top points are now.

The joke of all this is the table I made years ago is more accurate then this, just this has holes in it. Bars do not sit flat on the table, they rock and pivot at the moment, the other issue is the thinkness of some of the plates is too thin, defo out of specs so they sit low.. I've ordered some shim stock to add under the pads and see if I can make it good.

superclarkey wrote:Here are some more images of the surface, I've tried to edit the photos so that you can see the marks a little better.

After measuring the table, all the centres are high, going to have to shim the ends up by 0.005 min, and measuring the ups and down (the marks you can see) measure about 0.02mm.

You can see w3here I've taken a surface stone that has been surface ground to the top of each run, its rubbed the high point off and as you can see its not sorted, but you can see where the top points are now.

The joke of all this is the table I made years ago is more accurate then this, just this has holes in it. Bars do not sit flat on the table, they rock and pivot at the moment, the other issue is the thinkness of some of the plates is too thin, defo out of specs so they sit low.. I've ordered some shim stock to add under the pads and see if I can make it good.

_DX30777.jpg

_DX30775.jpg

_DX30774.jpg

_DX30771.jpg

_DX30769.jpg

I think if you look at the manufacturer site, they indicate the flatness tolerance across a given length. 0.005 across 36” would be pretty good, across 12” not terrific. But as a welding table, it is probably inconsequential.

If the slats aren't bowed or twisted more than, say .005" in each, would it be worth inquiring if you could have them
Blanchard ground as a bulk lot ?

kiwi2wheels wrote:If the slats aren't bowed or twisted more than, say .005" in each, would it be worth inquiring if you could have them
Blanchard ground as a bulk lot ?

I looked at their website. They cite 0.012 in 36” so it’s likely well within spec.