Modular Fixturing and a Precision Welding Table

StrongHand Tools Modular Fixture Package put to good use

Nearing completion on this short production run of Sewer Crawlers. Modular Fixturing and a Precision welding table help to make this job go smoothly.

Without the Stronghand welding table, there was a lot of tapping with a dead blow hammer and lots of c clamps and c tong vise grip clamps.

With the Buildpro precision welding table, this thing goes together like cake.

The Side plates that get welded to the sides of the main body of the crawler have pins welded in that need to be ground flush before assembly.

I welded a few of them with the Everlast PowerPro 256 tig welder but that was just too slow. I am a tired man and want to get this thing done, so I decided to mig weld them and let my buddy do the grinding so they would sandwich flush with the main crawler body...and that turned out to save lots of time.

Once the pins were welded and ground, the side plates were ready to be aligned and tack welded.

While I was driving to my friends shop, I thought of a way to fit them up. That is the funny thing. All this modular fixturing lying around does more than provide ways to clamp things....It actually gives you ideas.

I got the 114 piece modular fixturing kit...the most popular one.

Turns out, it is more than capable of aligning the parts of these crawlers.

Once they were all tack welded, I settled into a long evening of mig welding.

OMG! It kicked my 52 year old ass. Lifting, bending, and welding is not as easy as it was 30 years ago. It was a good kind of tired and I was happy that I did get some good video of the welding.

I hope you enjoy the video and learn something too.

In this video, I talk about how arc starts are much better when the tip of the wire is red hot....try this sometime. I believe you will find it is a helpful tip.

You have to be quick with the trigger, but you get the best starts when the tip is red hot. (thats what she said!...sorry I couldn't resist.)

Modular Fixturing is something I have done without for my whole career. Its not cheap, but it is worth the investment for some people. I cant imagine a weekend warrior ponying up the cash to buy a setup like this, but for small and large welding and machine shops, It can make such a difference...Especially when you are courting a customer and they visit your shop.

The precision table top of the precision welding table and the modular fixture package makes one heck of a good first impression.
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