Welding Tips and Tricks

Having purchased my first welder December last year, I figured like many others making my own welding trolley would be a great way to gain some experience and I can say it was very rewarding. Many mistakes were make and many valuable lessons were picked up along the way.

The goal was to design something that would hold all my welding stuff while keeping it as compact as possible and I think I achieved that.

It started with scribbling drawings to try get my ideas down on paper. Followed by some numbers. And away we go. My attempt at a flat bench. Scored with grinder and folded with a hammer then filled in with weld. No more welding! Spray booth is something I made some time back.

The end!

Wow, thats a great effort. One little tip, make the handle for pushing the trolley a little longer and on a flatter angle. It can be very hard to move a heavy trolley with a small/ steep angle handle.

By the way, Welcome. I'm up in Bendigo.

Yeah you're right and it certainly is heavy! About 170kg fully loaded and I gotta give it a good heave on the inital pull back. Trolley 2.0? Lol

Great looking trolley. The only criticism I would make is, you spent all the time making great looking welds, then you ground them down! You "might" have left them so you can look back and see them, and use them as a progress report. I've done that, and always blamed them on one of my son's as "their first efforts"

Very neat work and every thing packed away handy. I agree on the handle issue. Wouldn't be hard to clamp on some stock for dummy handles and play around a bit to find the sweet spot that feels good far you. That way you can play with the height as well as balance. Good luck.

Lots of steel in that cart and it turned out very nice. Good job. Very well thought out with rooms for all your accessories and a nice filler holder with removable closure. Don't you love it when a sketch turned into a reality? I have done the same many times and the drawings always get modified along the way and what starts out as a simple drawing turns into a blueprint.

cj737 wrote: I've done that, and always blamed them on one of my son's as "their first efforts"

I am going to have to blame my wife when I make an ugly weld in the future. "My wife wanted to try and weld so I let her do that bead".

Here's a pic of a kemppi tig trolley. Its a factory item. Have a look at the length of the handles and the angle. We have these at work so I could measure it for you if you like. The long handles help with leverage when starting of as well as stopping as you have good control.

Thanks cj737 but some welds are best forgotten haha I should have actually kept a tally for the number of times I had to regrind my tungsten so as to compare against future projects.

Cheers for the suggestions homeboy and weldin mike 27 horizontal handles was something I considered in the early stages but the designer part of me forbid for the handles to protrude past the wheels in keeping with the compact theme.

electrode I love how welding can help to make an idea in a physical thing. There's something magical about melting metal.

No proble mate. Those (nearly) horizontal handles arn't so bad as they afford you a spot to wrap up your cables. They look long but rally only stick out about 350 past the back of the machine.

tonij wrote:Thanks cj737 but some welds are best forgotten haha I should have actually kept a tally for the number of times I had to regrind my tungsten so as to compare against future projects.

I've had 2 fairly sage bits of advice from professionals mentoring me: "Either get good welding with a mirror, or learn how to use a grinder". And perhaps most appropriate to me, "If you are grinding after welding, you aren't learning". I keep the good folks at Walter employed making discs (I can honestly say with pride).

Nice build.
Late advice but you should have waited little longer to paint. New ideas of nice-to-have-features always pops up.
I made my last cart about 4 years ago, last mod this week...

AndersK wrote:Nice build.
Late advice but you should have waited little longer to paint. New ideas of nice-to-have-features always pops up.
I made my last cart about 4 years ago, last mod this week...

I guess by now you've narrowed the color choice down to a few?

AndersK wrote:Nice build.
Late advice but you should have waited little longer to paint. New ideas of nice-to-have-features always pops up.
I made my last cart about 4 years ago, last mod this week...

I know what you mean. I added some hooks for hanging stuff after painting my cart so I just drilled a few holes to mount them. Next time leave it raw for a while.

tonij wrote:
electrode I love how welding can help to make an idea in a physical thing. There's something magical about melting metal.

There is also something magical how tigging galvanized can mess up a tungsten.

LtBadd wrote:
I guess by now you've narrowed the color choice down to a few?

Very true.
Base is still gray with a random occurrence of silver, corn blue, black and brown where new attachments have been welded in
Last was for the tungsten grinder, which now has been upgraded to cordless, since they were on sale.
Sorry for putting your thread at drift Toni.

On that vein, I saw something on facebook that tickled me...

"If you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
If you're a weldor, everything looks like whatever the hell you WANT it to be."

Steve S

Otto Nobedder wrote:On that vein, I saw something on facebook that tickled me...

"If you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
If you're a weldor, everything looks like whatever the hell you WANT it to be."

Steve S

Everything *is* a nail to my neighbor as he keeps pounding like every day for the last 25 years! Always making enough noise with that damned hammer as though he built an apartment complex, but yet all he has made is a birdhouse. Then when he starts his next project he tears apart the bird house to steal the materials to make more noise on his next project. Arrgghh! And it goes on and on...And the sound of the Skilsaw binding up is also annoying.

Clearly he is murdering and chopping up hitchhikers.