Why Did I Drill 1756 Holes in This?

wow oh this is so strange this gotta look weird it's really cool my name is jason and i'm that guy rolling around on the floor i've been a welder and fabricator for the past 20 years during my career i have found many tools that i wanted to improve so i started my own company where i can design better tools and this is the foundation of every workshop a table in my line of work this table is actually called a fixture table i've tested the industry's best tables and even prototype my own but unfortunately none of them have met my standards so today i'm going to be building hopefully the world's best fixture table so what is a fixture table well it can be described as an elevated work surface with four or more stable legs much like your kitchen table but that's where the similarities stop the fixture table's main design is to take many parts and hold them also arrange them steady them in a precise location now that the parts are held together precisely the next step is to often glue fasten or weld them together lastly it aids in repetition it's not uncommon to get an order for multiples of the same structure or product so this helps work quickly and effectively oh and having a table that doesn't catch on fire is a real bonus too so this is my very first fixture table and it's a big piece of plate steel and this is probably considered the best welding table in the world to most people but to me this table is just filled with problems the first problem you're going to notice when you're fabricating or welding on a table like this is that you can only clamp around the perimeter of the table which means hold your parts on the edge if you have clamps that have a really long throat on them that's going to allow you to move your work more inboard how do you hold your components or parts in the middle of the table and the solution that most people do is they actually weld the part directly to the table just like this custom fixture there's one two three four clamps that are dedicated for this part and i can't use these clamps for anything else what a waste of money but this is what you got to do when you have a table like this hey what the hell is this oh you didn't really give any specific guidelines about welding the next problem after your fixture has been welded to the table is that you got to come back and grind the goofy thing off not only is that slow but it leaves the table surface compromised and the more you do it the more the table gets ground down basically eliminating the flatness of your table i'm going to be using the word flat quite a bit and i don't want you to get it confused with level level is when the surface is aligned with the earth's horizon so with that being said i can have a surface that's flat but not level so let's talk about surface flatness and it can be described as the highs and the lows of the table surface and we're going to be using aerospace flatness you know the guys that make airplanes and spaceships they want their tables to be plus or minus two and a half thousandths in a two foot area so that's our target so now we're back to another problem flatness this table is not flat because it's a piece of plate steel plate still has a really wide tolerance of how flat it's going to be coming off the mill so that's going to be a problem too whatever i weld on top of this dish table is going to follow that path this is the same principle that's applied to building a house if you start off with a crooked foundation everything above that is also going to be crooked originally from the steel mill somebody has cut this with a torch and it is not square it's like an 89 degree angle so i cannot use this surface and this surface as a reference not only that the condition of the edge of this table is rolled because this is a piece of hot rolled plate that's not even a flat edge to work off of or pull my tape measure from because this big huge piece of plate steel is a big problem people have already come up with a solution the fixture table but even those tables aren't perfect so let me show you i've been collecting studying and even reviewing these tables for years scrutinizing every detail and trying to find out which one worked best for me but there's a lot of problems with them problems like most are the same size as a 4x8 sheet of material or smaller some are too large to reach across some have holes that are spaced too far apart warp or even flex when they should stay rigid and some of them just aren't even flat i have really high standards on how i design my tools so i wanted to fix all these problems with a new table design knowing all the problems with the other tables it's time to create my fixture table wishlist first i want the table to be a useful size it'd also be nice to have the table to be thick and heavy duty and built like a tank it'd also be nice to maximize the surface area because i want the table to be really heavy it's going to need some strong legs and i'd like them to be able to elevate the table up and down it would also be nice to be able to move the table around without using a forklift and i definitely don't want to weld anything to the table so some clever way of holding the parts down to the surface would be nice since i'll be designing a super table from scratch we'll need a way to track its capabilities much like fantasy football all the fixture tables that i tested previously i have ranked in five individual categories we'll look at each table that scored high in that specific category and try to meet or exceed it but the only way we're gonna find out is to actually build the table so let's get started when it comes to building a frame i have two choices one like this style which is a whole bunch of weldments or pieces of tube steel the second frame style is what i call a platen and that platen style is basically one big giant piece that's all one unit so the main difference between these frames is the amount of parts my prototype table frame had a bunch of these pieces that all had to be welded together anytime something's welded there's some slight distortion that happens to the frame in order to remove the distortion and to get the table back into specifications it generally needs to be machined or milled the other solution to a welded frame is to well just cast the frame and we call that a platen having the frame cast all in one piece is going to keep the parts to a minimum plus it makes it easier to assemble the only table that i reviewed that was entirely cast was the weld cell table and it exceeded in its frame design so i'm going to build the table with that platen frame just like that did being cast it also allows me to be more creative and the design decisions later on so when it comes to welding table material we have quite a few options we have some exotic stuff like maybe some stainless steel or aluminum but really when it comes to practicality we have two cast iron and a36 steel by choosing to cast an a36 steel i know it's abundant and readily available and it can be made into any size i want there are a few downsides though when the table gets scratched it leaves a nasty burr and what i mean by that is that the scratching material gets displaced on the surface and leaves a bump making the table less flat than it was before steel can also be subjected to distortion from heat which is a bad thing if i cast it too thin and finally the nemesis of all fixture tables is the weld spatter spatter is the byproduct of welding these little bbs end up sticking to the table and oh man do they love to stick to steel if i choose steel i'm gonna have to put a coating on it to prevent the spatter from sticking to it or another solution is to just change material altogether and we can change it to gray cast iron one of the benefits of cast iron is that it's really hard to weld to so that makes it a perfect material to make a welding table out of that way weld spatter doesn't stick to it and makes it easily maintainable plus it's bad at conducting heat which means less heat distortion that's why you see engine blocks cylinder heads brake rotors made out of the stuff and another benefit is scratch on the cast iron table will just turn to powder and not displace itself on the surface so the table can remain flat and require less maintenance the only table i reviewed that was made from cast iron was the weld cell table so i know my table can be a platen while still using cast iron material which is what i'll be going with how big should i actually make this welding table the most common size is four feet by eight feet long the problem with the four by eight table is that my material is the exact same size so putting it on the table will cover up the entire surface practically rendering it useless why do welding table manufacturers even do this i find it so frustrating even metric tables are slightly undersized from 4x8 and have the exact same problem so i know i'm going to make my table to be a little bit larger than that but if i go too large it will be really difficult for me to reach across it comfortably so i have found 5 feet to be the maximum width for that reason as for length that can really be anything i want until i run into the problem of transportation and unnecessary cost as long as it's over eight feet that's going to be helpful the only table that i reviewed that was larger than four by eight was weld cell's five by eight table which has a wider width but still only eight feet in length giving a surface area of forty square feet to find the golden size that's not too long and not too short i'll think i'll oversize my table by six inches in both length and width that's going to give us almost 20 percent more surface area that only gives me 38.25 square feet this still isn't enough surface area i want more and the only way to get more is to maximize all the sides of the table many tables i reviewed did not make use of all the dimensions of the table by using its sides including the weld cell and i think they missed an opportunity the five sided tables that i tested allows me to put tools on the edge of the table which allows me to extend the table surface or even put two or more tables together to create a mega table what do we got here megadesk of course on top of that these sides will improve the table's rigidity the tables that i reviewed with the most surface area was the serta flat which was 48 square feet so i'm gonna have my sides be at least eight inches tall bringing my total surface area to a whopping 55.6 square feet that ranks this table really high on the usable surface area list i have a surface now but i definitely don't want it to just sit on the ground we have to talk about table legs an important component to the table there are so many design considerations when considering the function of the legs at first glance they just keep the table off the ground but they do a lot more than that they can aid in the table's rigidity keeping the twist out of it they can also make the table mobile allowing it to move around the workshop and finally its ergonomics can assist the user by being able to adjust the height for comfort or sitting or standing or even being able to store something underneath not all tables are designed like this though this case and this table right here these legs are height adjustable which i like but they're kind of spindly so the manufacturer has given us braces they're actually designed to be down here this low i found that these get in the way if i'm going to store stuff underneath if i move these up high they actually get in the way of me sitting at the table so naturally i just took them off completely there's consequences with that because this table was designed to have the braces around it and there's only one attachment point up here in this table leg so i have to be very careful not to shake rock or roll this table because i could literally fold the table over on the legs and we're gonna have to find a way to attach the legs to the table itself i want a nice big wide bolt pattern that can really put the leg in a serious side load this will allow me to not have to put braces on the legs where the legs mount is really important they cannot exceed the outside surface of the table this is going to allow me to pair two table surfaces together or marry them or expand the surface if i want to and not have the legs interfere with each other while also remaining height adjustable and mobile on wheels how cool is that i won't have to worry about the legs folding if they roll over an extension cord or cable around my shop now that i know the size and shape of the table it's now time to focus on making the table straight and strong and trying to achieve that aerospace flatness the tables i've tested vary from being super limp and noodly to extremely rigid with the weld cell and the 5 8 build pro deflecting 5 000 of an inch the 28 millimeter build pro even got as thin as four thousandths of an inch but i want to surpass these numbers to achieve the aerospace result of two and a half thousandths of an inch and two feet so how are we going to do it i'm going to be designing the table with cad and this allows me to build the table and test it in a simulation by adding ribs to the platen i can test its predicted strength and deflection changing the amount of ribs and the height the thickness and even the location will all add to the rigidity and also trying to reduce the cost of manufacturing cad also can calculate the weight i think i ended up around a 3000 pound platinum but we won't know till we see it in person i think i ended up with a good balance between weight and rigidity this dirty table is no more special than a fancier piece of plate steel so it's time to give it some utility so let's talk about holes for a second i can have all my parts on a table but how will i clamp them down now a clamp will only work on the edge of the table so that only leaves me with the perimeter surface not only would it be nice to hold my parts down but i need to arrange my components in a certain way or whatever the drawings call out for so some sort of grid pattern would be nice also i think we can align and hold parts down at the same time so the way to solve that problem is putting a hole on a grid pattern and that raises the next question how many holes do we need and how often are they and how far apart are they spaced so ideally the more holes i have the more tooling i can use if i put too many holes in the table it could potentially make the surface weaker also there's going to be some spots where it might interfere with the ribbing or the table structure underneath so we have to avoid that so two inches apart seems like the sweet spot it's not too wide not too close and doesn't interfere with any of the table structure now that we know we're going to put a hole what does that hole look like well we have two choices and the first one is to thread the hole so that the table acts like a nut but there's some problems with that too the threads offer a place for the grit and grime to hide and they're always a pain to maintain not only the fact that they could get damaged and basically wreck the hole and then there's cost of manufacturing 1756 holes being tapped is expensive and nobody wants to pay for that one way to solve this problem is to make a smooth borehole we can lock the tooling to the table with the smoothbore hole by creating some sort of binding effect and once pressure is binding it's really going to grip the inside of the hole this makes maintenance a breeze compared to threads plus it's a bit faster to pull the fixture from the smooth hole than have to unthread one what size should the holes be in the tabletop in the current table market you have two popular sizes a 5 8 hole or a 28 millimeter one is really big and one is small i found that the 5 8 whole system has some drawbacks the fixtures are really small and lightweight the clamps don't have a lot of clamping force and generally the 5 8 tables are much thinner in size the first thing i don't like about the 28 millimeter setup is that the whole spacings are too far apart generally they're on four inch hole spacings or a hundred millimeter and that really doesn't give you enough hole locations to really precision locate your clamps also the fixtures are really long to span those four inch hole centers the fixtures are big and expensive so i want something right in the middle and i think we can build that and that whole diameter for me is going to be three quarters and when you look at three quarter is the largest we can fit on a two inch grid and the fixtures are strong enough to be able to take a lot of clamping force this seems to be the perfect hole size for this table all the benefits with none of the drawbacks the welding table that i tested that had the most number of holes was the serta flat fab block and that had 1728 holes for the fireball table its size and grid pattern it pushes it up to 1756 holes now that the table's all designed i want to look at it through augmented reality or ar and i'm going to use my phone to do that this is going to allow me to walk around it see its size shape this looks so strange i'm smiling from ear to ear how neat is that if you guys would like to see this table on your own i'll leave a link down below so you guys can check it out on your phones also here's the small table i'm going to move it wherever i want to here i'm going to twist it around there you go i'm going to plop it right there and now i can see the small table i love the world we live in right now i'm gonna sit at the table this is gonna give me a good perceptual where my knees are yep that is so cool it's looking great i think i've checked all the boxes off my wish list but i only know when it arrives so let's get it made first we're going to need a pattern usually it's made of wood and it's a replica of my cad model but with some draft angle added in that pattern gets pressed into sand it is then removed leaving behind a void that the molten metal will fill up after it cools the platen is pulled out of the mold and is placed on a gigantic gantry milling machine this removes all the extra rough material from the surface bringing it to its final size and flatness then after the milling all 1756 holes gets drilled on that perfect 2x2 grid pattern as i wait for the table delivery i need to make sure the table isn't completely useless so let's talk about table fixtures or the tools that go on top of the table this is the most important thing on any fixture table system and that's the tooling and i think it's the part that most people forget about you have to think of this table much like a game of chess sure the board is nice and it keeps the pieces within their boundaries but it's the chess pieces that perform the specific tasks in the case of a welding table the fixtures hold the parts precisely in 3d space the problem is that i'd like all the pieces to play the game if i lose one i can't play so what if i took these pieces and morphed them into a super piece one that can perform the tasks of many that way i'll be able to have less fixtures that end up doing more this design principle is something i took into cad in order to create a modular fixture that solves this problem now when i get the table back i'll be able to hold my parts down with precision but have the pieces do the tasks of many the topic of fixtures is such a deep rabbit hole that i've made a lot of bonus videos on my other channel that i'd encourage you guys to check out i would love to go into greater detail but a truck just pulled up outside with a surprise inside [Music] [Applause] [Music] wow look at that this thing looks fantastic now that it's here let's see if it holds up to my expectations so let's run a test remember i'm trying for aerospace tolerance which is plus or minus two thousandths of an inch in two feet let's give the table a quick wipe down and we'll throw the straight edge on top and see how flat it is i'm going to run this test exactly the way i did in the table review and then we can compare it to the others that i tested earlier so here's a 2 000 shim this cannot slip underneath the straight edge that's touching we just go along the straight edge no sticky sticky sticky i mean that's like two to three thousandths over the entire distance let's turn it the other way nope stuck stuck tight tight so i cannot get a 2 000 shim underneath there so you can literally pluck a hair out put it on this table and i want to see if the straight edge teeter totter's on it so what should happen is if i twist this it should pivot it's literally pivoting on that 2000th gem because that's the high spot then that nut this is the most accurate welding table that i have ever measured i can't believe it's taken me four years to get to this point and this table exceeds all my expectations and then some i know this table is going to work perfect for me and i'm absolutely confident that it's going to work for you too there's a big gap in the table market right now and i know that this table fits right in there if you want more details please check out fireballtool.com and also check out the ar feature it's really cool seeing this table in your home shop or workplace so i'm excited to see what you guys create with it thank you guys for watching and i'll see you guys on the next one

Channel: Fireball Tool

Views: 1,159,198

Keywords: fireball, tool, Fireball tool, Welding, fixture, table, review, table build, welding table, weldsale, siegmund, BuildPro, Acorn, Certiflat, Rhinocart, Fab block, 28 hole, 5/8, imperial, metric, fixtures, clamps, biggest table, best table, expensive desk, ball lock bolt, tack bolt, tig, mig, surface

Id: JAcSNL1T3OA

Length: 21min 33sec (1293 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 06 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/mtnmadness84]

Yeah. Love my Fireball Tools.

It’s not just a brand, it’s a way of being—this guy loves making tools that last.

I couldn’t wait for his tables to come out—built(drilled) my own with 1” A36 I got from a local scrapyard. It’s not as nice as a fireball table but it works.

[u/Very-likely-high]

I love Fireball Tools! Some day I will have his bench vice in my shop

[u/CoachBrooks]

“That’s where the simyilarities stop”

[u/wastedwu]

Didn't watch the video but Abom79 just installed this table in his shop.

[u/paul_miner]

TLDW: Fireball Tool designs and builds a fixture table for holding and welding parts, based on the many fixture tables he's reviewed and his own needs.