Welding cubes

For some reason, I tend to weld a lot of rectangles, and cubes, out of steel tubing. 99% of the time, it's 1" x 1" x 1/8" wall. For along time, I have been using these Wilton 90 degree corner clamps that I bought at Lowe's, for something like $30 a piece. They are light weight cast aluminum, and have served me well. However, when welding a cube, it takes multiple set ups, several grinding set ups, and so forth. When a recent project arouse to weld some rectangles and cubes, I decided to invest in some new equipment.

In the first picture, you can see a rough set up using the mentioned Wilton clamps. The second picture being the end result.

I  have been drooling over these clamps, from Stronghand Tool for years. But at $1600 for all 8 needed to weld a cube, they have been out of my price range.

I bought these corner clamps made by Stronghand Tools, to replace my Wilton corner clamps.

But I still need a way to clamp a third axis. After doing alot of googling, I found an image from an obscure website, showing how to use 2 products from Stonghand, to make a less expensive 3 way corner clamp. By using a combination of these pipe pliers and these clamps, I was able to make a cube in one set up! I actually ordered the parts from Welding Supply.com because their prices are less than Trick Tools, but I order some items from Trick Tools as well.

You can see a cube set up here:

After tacking, before full welding. 

Harbor Freight Bar Bender Set up, 90 deg Steel

In the previous post about setting up the Harbor Freight Bar Bender, we bent some 5051 aluminum using the right angle attachment. Here, we will be bending 1/8" x 1" cold rolled 1018 steel. With this material, you can not use the right angle attachment, as the steel will actually fracture on the back side. On these parts, I had to get the 90 degree bend with a small radius around the center pin.

For this set up, we use the bar bender in it's more standard set up, of having the swinging arm pined in the last hole, and bending around the center pin as the mandrel. I wanted a tight radius bend, so I used the pivot pin with no extra mandrel in the center. The driving pin in the swing arm was in the 3rd hole, as I only had a small amount of stock sticking out to bend. In the frame of the bender, I bent against the other pivot pin, although I should have installed the square stop block. I wanted a bend of just 1-1/8" sticking out, and this is about the minimum possible in this set up. Anything less, and the material will slip past the swing arm driving pin and you won't get the full 90 deg.

Setting up a Harbor Freight Bar Bender for 90 degree bends

I love my little harbor freight bar bender. I use it for a lot of parts. We even use a few of them at my day job for bending lots of parts we shouldn't be able to in quantities that exceed expectation. We have actually worn a few of them out bending 1000's of 3/8" stainless rod.

The problem is the lack of set up information for general bending. The book that comes with it is vague in explaining where to put what pins and stop to get the desired results. I will be posting pictures and information for every job I do with mine, for the purpose of helping others like myself out.

In our first installment, I was bending 1-1/2" wide, 1/8" thick, 5051 aluminum sensor brackets. For this we use the right angle bend attachment. As shown below, it gets mounted in the back frame. As opposed to standard set ups where your bending around the mandrel on the center of the frame, with the right angle attachment, you are using the arm to push the part across and over the right angle attachment. That is why the arm gets moved from the center hole, to at least the 3rd hole. Depending on your part, you may move it farther in. When I get some time, I will post a link to a youtube video and a picture of the part before and after.