Need recomendations on 2" square steel tube for router frame.

[danm]

I'm a newb to the group but I've been lurking around for a while. Great place! I need to know what kind of 2" square steel tube makes most sense for my welded frame. Does anyone have some recomendations on wall thickness, hot rolled or cold rolled or type of steel?
Any help is really apprecieated!!

Thanks,

Dan

[jcc3inc]

Sir,

I made my machine table out of 2" steel tube. It is 32 x 36" and if you will email me directly, I'll return pix to you.

jccinc (at) owc.net

Regards,
Jack C.

[andy_ck87028]

Dan

I went forward with my design using a mixture of 40mm*40mm (is that 2" ... I can't remember) and angle iron only to find the angle iron flexes and square section is a lot stronger. With hindsight the entire frame of 40*40 would have been better although that would have committed me to welding as bolt jointing 40*40 does not create a neat solution.

It is not possible to over engineer the frame and so the thicker the side wall the better. I have been told welding anything less than 3mm can burn holes in the material. For my frame, I would have gone 4mm.

Because angle iron can flex, I re-designed my gantry to use square section, except I dropped the weight by going to 3mm sidewall.

For material, I am purely talking mild steel.

Andy

[jeffs555]

Dan,
I am just starting to build mine, but the frame will be 48"x28" for a cutting area of 36x18. I had originally designed it for conduit hanger channel, because you can get it cheaply at Home Depot. This is a 1-5/8 x 1-5/8 square channel about .1" thick. It has bent lips on the open ends of the channel so is almost as strong as square tubing, and is a material worth considering. By the way Andy, 40mm is about 1-5/8 inches. I changed to welded mild steel 2" sq tube with 1/8" walls because I got a good price on it(ie free).

Jeff