Colo_River_Ram

OK,

So I get tired of staring at the dinosaurs (old unfinished projects) in my shop and decide it's time to get one finished.

The welding skid project:

Bottles can be used in this configuration or two 300's can be installed in the skid along with two AC4's for those big burn jobs
A storage box for the future plasma torch will go to the left of the bottles



From top left, down and too the right,

oxy/acct , stinger and ground leads

50' 3/8", 100' 3/8" & 50' 1/2" hose

2 x 50' 12 gauge triple tap ext cords (on separate circuits)

Believe it or not the inspection panel on the welder can still come out.




Miller Bobcat 250 (fuel injected) - 250 amps / 12,000 watt gen set.



SS hard and woven lines to the oxy/acct hose reel, The skids oxy line is by the middle air reel for easy swap out



Welding lead reel isolation blocks




Power blocks to feed the isolated reels



Remote oil drain and filter (no more oil change messes)



Ext cord reels are modified (position lockable) air reels, just unplug to wind-unwind



Jumper cable tap (blue cap - right of and bellow fire ext) for the welders battery.



Can you figure out how the latches work?



This skid can be bolted directly to the truck bed that I built here

https://www.dieseltruckresource.com/...light=Flat+bed

With the brackets shown on the 1st pic it can be adapted to any of the trailers I built as well.

What do you think of it?

Fronty Owner

where's the skid earthing lug?
any provisions for additional fuel on board?

looks good tho.

railroaderone

Looks good you have some talent

sherod

If it's in your way, I'll store it for you! Nice!

madhat

Man, that's nice!

Hvytrkmech

Super clean work. Nice job.

Colo_River_Ram

The welder to skid to truck/trailer bed is all metal to metal (via nuts / bolts and or threaded holes) then a static strap off the truck/trailer. If the unit ends up as a stationary gen set I can see doing a ground rod.

As for additional fuel I have another skid mounted transfer tank if the job warrants it.

Fronty Owner

that works too.

when do we get to see it mounted on your truck?

Colo_River_Ram

Probably next summer. I like shop work when it's -40 outside.

The grounding issue is an interesting can of worms to throw out there as some folks thinks a portable generating device needs to have a ground rod pounded into the earth.

Well who is going to pay for an emergency locate every time you get to the end of your leads and move the machine?

Don't get me wrong I'm all for safety but lets not kill common sense along the way.

NE frmhnd

Do those blue bolted-on caps at the ends of the runners come off for extra parts/supply storage? Could you have used them for secondary air tanks?

Fronty Owner

depending on where your working (with a gas patch location), there is usually several earthing rods on lease.
Yeah, if your welding up joe's horse pen, it doesn't make sense, but rolling up on location and potentially backing your truck up to touching the rig to get under the sub structure somewhere, your gen set could be at a different earth potential than the rigs.

Colo_River_Ram

Yes they are hinged and bolted both. You can put the 200 or 300 oxy's (one on each side) in there if needed. I used bolts as that side of the truck has the pipe racks on it and latches would get beat up pretty fast. The round plates allow you access to the bottles valves if your hauling pipe.

I'm with you fronty..

chaikwa

That is some nice work! Everything you do is meticulous, to say the least. I like to think I'm pretty handy in the fab department, but you can run circles around me!

Can of worms for sure! We had a state inspector throw a fit last summer because our trailer mounted generator wasn't grounded with a 10' grounding rod. I was polite at the time because I didn't know the specifics of the topic, but I asked the TV crew with their live truck what they did. Their generator is 10 times the size of ours, 440 volts and 3 phase. The ops manager who runs everything at the station and in the field explained how the National Electric Code actually prohibits the use of grounding rods on portable generators that are isolated from the ground, and it actually CREATES a hazard to do that. Then the next day he faxed the whole code to me so I'd have it for Mr State Inspector at the next goat rodeo. I'll say 'the issue has been resolved' and leave it at that.

Absolutely fantastic set-up tho. I was going to build a skid before I got the International, and I still may at some point, but I'm glad I didn't because no matter how well mine may have turned out, I'd be unhappy with it now!

Colo_River_Ram

It's about time you showed up..You been out chuckin' wood?

The grounding topic has created many of heated forum discussions. Like I said common sense go's a long way.. That is one advantage to air tools I have been shocked by their price but never while using them.

Bark

That is marvelous!
Good work.
I don't ever want to see you team up with chaikwa.
You two would wind up building something that the govt would pay you to not build.
And if Shorts and Heidi got involved it would result in something that would kill you if you looked at it.

Very nice work