Metal bike/bin store - MIG Advice

Tags: #<Tag:0x00007fa49837be70>

Wonder if @metaltechs or anyone else might be able to help with a bit of advice on my first metal project.

Over past couple of days I’ve managed to mostly weld up the first two frame elements for this bike/bin store thing I hope to make - at the moment they look like this (40x40x3mm and 40x60x3mm SHS). On the positive side they’re both square and within a mm of each other, on the less-positive side I’m really not sure about weld quality.

I went for butt joints with the thought they’d be easier than mitres but the relatively large gap between the radius of one SHS section and the flat face of the adjoining piece was a bit harder than I expected to weld consistently.

On grinding down the first set of welds I’ve ended up with some quite visible ‘seams’ between the pieces which don’t fill me with joy, for example:


which is by far the worst - others are more like this:

My sense is that I probably need to redo the welds, but I’m not sure if it’ll be OK simply to go over what’s already there, or whether things are bad enough that I need to cut them out and start again?

Second Q is about the internal corner welds, which I haven’t yet done. Is it possible to grind these in some way or do I just have to try and be as neat as possible with the weld?

(FWIW, plan is to get the whole thing powder coated when it’s done)

Any advice gratefully received!

I’m not a professional welder so I would just set higher voltage and make another seam on top. You will introduce oxides into the seam, but it will look better aestetically. Or cut out bad bits.
On internal corners - those accessible with a file (power file/dremel)

2 Likes

Welding on top should be perfectly fine. When its ground flush and looks fine, it will be very strong. The interior fillets will only add to the strength.

1 Like

Thanks both. Glad it’s not a whole do over.

On the internal corners, curved flap discs got suggested by Google and seem to make sense, ordered a pack and will leave whatever spares there are in the grinding area cabinet.

1 Like

At some point we should get a nice die grinder setup

I’ve got an air powered one somewhere.
I don’t use it, I could easily lend it to the space

1 Like