One Swell Trailer

[GeoTracker90]

Looking great Mike...awesome miters...your crown molding in the house must be spectacular!...:ylsmoke:

Technical noob question..when you miter steel like that, is it necessary to grind back the cuts in order to weld?

Keep the updates rolling in!

Thanks for the compliments and the question Titan!

To answer your question I would say yes and no.
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With adjusting the welder settings I can easily get enough heat to be confident of the weld penetration with a tight butt joint like this. Now, having said that, for the welds that I know I will be grinding down I did take a thin cut off wheel in the angle grinder and open up the butt joint a little. This was really only for the welds on top of the frame where I will have the main box or other components sitting right on top of the frame. I didn't worry about opening up the outside corner vertical joints because the metal at that point is thin enough that it melts back pretty quick and then the filler metal from the MIG welding process adds it back in. I hope that all made sense. If not just let me know and I'll try again.

Mike

 

[rustED]

Looks great, your making alot of progress!

 

[GeoTracker90]

OK guys, I need your help. What kind of latches are these and where can I find some? I'm going to need to round some up as part of outfitting the trailer as well as the tow vehicle.
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Any help will be greatly appreciated!

Mike

 

[indiedog]

Mike, they are called "antiluce" pins here, see link below. I did a quick google and seems they are not readily available in the US.

http://uesint.com/shop/category/fasteners/

 

[Mark Harley]

Ebay UK has sellers who ship world wide.

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_odk....TR0.TRC0.H0.Xantiluce&_nkw=antiluce&_sacat=0

 

[GeoTracker90]

Thanks for the help guys. It looks like I will be placing an order to the UK to get them then. I might hold off on these for just a little bit while I focus on getting the skeleton of the trailer put together. Thanks again!

Mike

 

[GeoTracker90]

Fingers crossed. If all goes according to plans I'll be using this welder tonight to do the circumferential welds joining the threaded tube inserts to the DOM tube for the trailing links.
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Wish me luck!

Mike

 

[Titanpat57]

Impressive!

Maybe you could show the machine a few tricks...:ylsmoke:

Looking forward to the update.

 

[GeoTracker90]

Well guys, I forgot one of the threaded inserts for the tube at home. That combined with a couple other things means that I put off welding the tubes for trailing links until tomorrow night after work.

Now, here's the upside - we're going to get the welding vision camera installed before we do the welding. With any luck my cell phone camera will be able to capture the detail that the welding vision system shows on the monitor. If it does, it will be well worth the wait. My hope is that I will be able to upload a couple videos tomorrow night.

Now I admit that welding these on this welding system is complete overkill, but when the equipment is in the shop at work, I might as well get a little use out of it. This particular welding system is a demo unit that we've sent to some of the trade shows around the country. We build these in house from the iron structure down to the computer software and firmware, on down to the printed circuit boards. The welding vision system is one that we have been jointly developing that gives incredible detail of the weld pool and the arc and the weld wire entry point.

Lacking any other photos to share, here's a copy of the concept drawing that was put together before we went into production with this model.




Mike

 

[BSR]

What kind of latches are these and where can I find some?

Mike

Another source for you; I purchased my last ones here http://www.towsure.com/product/22mm_Antiluce_M12_Threaded
Only a couple of quid and very good quality.

 

[GeoTracker90]

After tonight one of my coworkers and I spent some time doing a little welding. We were able to get all of the threaded inserts welded into the 1-3/4" DOM tubing that I will be using for the trailing arms on the trailer's air bag suspension. I've shared these pictures on my Facebook page and I've been accused of cheating. Well, if that's what you want to call it. Me, I prefer the term opportunistic. :elkgrin:
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Now let me just preface the next couple pictures by saying we didn't do any weld development on samples prior to welding these up. Usually if we take the time to run a few samples first we can absolutely nail the parameters, and what looks good here would look like a piece of metallic art instead.
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So, with this welding completed I may be able to start welding the trailing arms together at some point tomorrow. Wish me luck!

Mike

 

[rustED]

Cheating??? I think it's awesome that you have access to that kind of equipment at work! Nice job!

 

[GeoTracker90]

Too much running around and not enough working - that's how Saturday ended up going for me. No matter. I was still able to get the trailer project moved a little closer to the goal line.
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With the help of my 14 year old and my 17 year old sons we were able to get some regular old MIG welding done. No "cheating" this time. We started out by getting the receiver hitch tube for the tongue welded into place. This was further reinforced by tying it into a secondary cross member back from the front of the frame. After getting that accomplished we added a cross member 18" forward from the back of the trailer. The rest of the cross members will start coming into play once I get the trailing arms built and their associated mounting brackets designed and machined. Wish me luck!

Mike

 

[GeoTracker90]

OK guys, I need some design help.

I keep going back and forth between just doing fenders on the side of the main box vs. having storage boxes on the side of the main box above the tires/fenders like I did on the first off-road trailer I built. Post up photos of your favorite fenders that you've seen on an off-road trailer. I'm looking for something unique if I go the route of fenders only.

Let's see what you've got for photos!

Mike

 

[stomperxj]

I am a fan of the standard Jeep style trailer fenders. I also would go with storage above/around the fenders. There's never too much storage