Anyone ever use these structural connector components?

[socceronly]

Nope, I'm not trying to get out of learning welding, still the plan for the new year.

But I came across this place and wondered how far you could take this stuff. Looks good for building things inside, but could it be used to build a frame on a trailer or flatbed?

McMaster-Carr

McMaster-Carr is the complete source for your plant with over 595,000 products. 98% of products ordered ship from stock and deliver same or next day.

www.mcmaster.com

Curious if people have used this before. If you scroll down the left menu there is a pretty amazing array of options.

JM

 

[Heading Out]

I'm using some of the strut channel to hold an enclosure or trunk in the
bed of my Jeep, makes it super easy to remove when it's not needed.

I used steel with a finish.

 

[llamalander]

x2 on the strut channel, great to try-out new mounting or bracket set-ups. Having the flexibility to mount things anywhere along the length is super handy, already galvanized so paint is not necessarily required.
Really useful for mounting things on the underside of a vehicle, where regular or obvious anchor points are hard to find.

 

[socceronly]

I've used the extruded aluminum T-rails quite a bit in the past when I was doing tradeshow I&D .

The good and the bad of it, well it's raw aluminum with no hardened anodization so it starts looking beat up pretty fast and when it's given the opportunity to vibrate (as in, loose packed in a shipping crate... or constantly jiggling at the joints in a 4wd on a rough road) it'll dust a lot.

The extrusion also represents a lot of extra material per linear foot of structure because it's made to be affixed at any point along it - so I could envision the weight getting out of hand pretty quickly.

I believe the lightest weight (relative to finished structure size) aluminum erector set for tradeshows I've used is Octanorm, because the main chords are hollow aluminum tubes and the only heavy parts are the extruded end bits and those only go at the joints. I guess with enough planning it might be possible to build cargo management structures from Octanorm.

Sorry I don't have much more to offer on that since my experience with that stuff has been well outside of the context you're talking about using it in but I hope I've provided something useful.

That's super helpful. Learn new things every time I read something on this site.

Appreciated.

JM