Another week of work in the garage studio, and the levelling feet project is completed. The goal of the project was to create levelling feet for a toolbox that sits on a floor that has a 4cm drop in level across the width of the box, and about a centimetre from front to back.
This was a far more difficult project than I’d originally envisaged, mainly due to thermal expansion of the welds of the nuts on the end of the tube. The tolerances were so slight for the diameter of the threaded rod, that any expansion of the weld would jam the thread against the side of the tube.
The eventual solution was to create a masking tape shim to wrap around the thread at each end, and centre it within the tube. Then, working VERY slowly. One tack at a time, allowing things to cool, working from side, to opposite side.
A major lesson is to work slowly, but weld faster at higher amperage, so less heat overall goes into the work piece.
For the four successful legs, I had four failures that had to be cut off and the baseplates redrilled, then three more tubes failed before they were to be welded into the baseplates.
Another lesson; just buy a whole box of whatever fittings you need, nuts, washers, whatever.