Welding Fabrication Table

I was planning to build a slotted welding table for my workshop. Since I had no problems with space and I sometimes built large metal structures, I wanted the table to be as large as possible. In the end, I came up with a size of 220x120 cm, which is the size of the largest door I have ever built. There are many cool videos on youtube on this topic, but the problem was that they are all mounting slots by welding. I don’t believe you can weld 19 slots to a 220cm tube without skewing it. It might work for small tables, but not for me. Plus, the metal bars that I was going to use as slots weren't perfect. There were new, but the difference between the edges was up to 0.7 mm. Finally, I came to the idea to mount slots with bolts. This will at least prevent the horizontal tubes from heating in 19 places, and this gives me the ability to change the height of the slots by placing thin fixed plates under them.

Made a jig from scrap metal for marking holes on slots. Eventually, it came out that using this jig was not the best approach. However, does the job.

The middle hole in one side is only for distinguishing the sides of the slot.

I used a magnetic drill press but it's really not required for this project. Regular drill press or just a drill will be enough.

Transformed the same jig for horizontal bars. The intention was to get ideally matching holes however had to adjust some holes eventually.

Since I already have the location of the holes and can figure out where to weld the vertical supports, I decided to weld them here before drilling.

Finally drilled holes on the base.

Each hex nut can be welded to the slot, but I doubt the slots will get too much heat and will be warped. Finally came to an idea to weld them on a strip and then weld that strip to the slot. This gives me one weld for each pair, plus the open hole distributes all the tension.

Mounted a couple of slots on each side to secure base bars.

At this point, I realized that some of the holes are not matching and I will have headaches during the final assembly.

Made leveling glides from 25mm bolt and 6mm thick plate.

Welded legs to horizontal bars and at the end welded some end cups on open tubes mostly for appearance.

By measuring the distance between slots I could figure out which of the holes is displaced. Had to align about 20% of the holes and this step took me a whole day to finish.

Tube imperfections and weldings on horizontal bars ended up with 1.25mm height difference between slots. Thanks to molt mounting I could able to insert thin plates under the slots and align them. Finally, I got 0.3-0.4mm precision.

Welded slot end caps and aligned them at the same time.

First marked straight-edge line. The with angle grinder aligned the upper edges of slots. This allows me to position end caps along the guide.

This took me 11 days to build. It's hard to explain with images and texts. I think the video contains more details.

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Feel free to ask questions or comment here or on YouTube.