The ULTIMATE Welding Cart: Design | Cut | Build S2:E5

This welding cart started off simple, but after seeing a few other build projects on the internet we decided to invest some time and resources into making the ULTIMATE welding cart. The result included not only our POWER MIG® 210MP welder, but also the SQUARE WAVE® TIG 200 and the FLEXCUT® 80 plasma cutter. So now it spans a little broader than your typical welding cart, making it the ultimate fabrication cart.

The most unique characteristics of a welding cart are gas bottle storage and the angle of the welder that makes it more ergonomic to use the knobs and adjust the settings. It's also convenient when you have somewhere to store your MIG gun and manage all of the cabling in an organized way. This was the foundation of our welding cart. From there we built onto it by adding storage for your gloves, the tape measure, welpers, a welding helmet, and a welding jacket. We also spread these items out a little on the top so that your can also set down a wax pencil or write down something on a sheet of paper.

By adding the plasma cutter onto our cart we also opted to incorporate the plasma grate so that our users could instantly cut their material. This required that we insulate the gas bottles from the electrical circuit by using a neoprene sleeve around the gas bottle. We tried to make the plasma grate collapsible by using a four bar linkage with a self-locking mechanism, but we couldn't quite figure out the math. You can see in the screenshot of our CAD drawing where we were encountering problems. Instead of messing with this further we opted to cut out a new bracket out of some durable 3/8" mid steel. This proved to be very stable. We also bolted it on to the cart, so if we needed to, we could still collapse the plasma grate.

We bought some fairly large casters from our local Harbor Freight Tool and designed some custom brackets that could be welded onto our frame. We made sure to install these casters and secure them tightly before welding on the floor of our cart that the TIG foot pedal would sit on. If we decided to install the casters after the floor was welded on it would have been a very awkward position to tighten the bolts. If you can find them, I would have preferred some locking casters. I just couldn't find them at Harbor Freight.

It took us about four part-time days to assemble the entire thing. It also took about a week to design it from start to finish; keep in mind that I'm still on a learning curve with the Fusion 360 CAD software. Let us know what you think about this gigantic welding cart in the comments below! We'd love to get some of your feedback.

 

Here's all of the 3/16" plate; which was the majority of what we used. We had one 3/8" plate for the plasma grate bracket. I've attached that as well. Good luck!

 

There is a way to do it because I've seen a guy on YouTube make it happen, but it seems fairly complicated. I usually design all of my flat plate stuff in Torchmate CAD and then export it as a DXF in order to add it to the project in Fusion 360. If Fusion 360 becomes very popular for our customers then we will probably contact them about a script that will work with our machines. For now, it's best to just use Torchmate CAD for all of your flat plate designs.

 

I've never tried sharing a Fusion 360 file because it is a cloud based software program. But try this out.