This is the drawing of the Barth 500V workbench showing the proposed steel welding table top I wanted fabricated to replace the stock plastic laminate covered plywood top that came with the bench. The factory top is fine for woodworking, but the holes in it are 22mm diameter which is proprietary to Barth forcing you to buy the Barth brand clamps and accessories which are very expensive and limited in scope.
As I started learning to weld, I quickly discovered that I wanted a proper steel welding table with conventional 16mm holes on a grid to accept the wide variety of welding clamps and fixturing components. Since I didn’t have room for a dedicated welding table, I decided to convert the Barth workbench to dual purpose by replacing the factory supplied top with a proper steel welding top.
First step was to find a company to fabricate the top, so I came up with this drawing and emailed it to tabandslot.com – they make welding table kits and do custom laser cutting work. What I got back was this design from the owner Dave:
screencast.com/t/HMXpDrJo
After some back and forth confirming specific dimensions and mounting, TabAndSlot fabricated the kit and shipped it to me via UPS freight in 3 heavy packages. The top consists of four top plates as shown in this drawing, and a matrix rib structure underneath the top plates that makes the top dead flat and completely rigid.
Posted by David P Best on 2016-08-13 06:23:43
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