How To Weld A Sheet Metal Box

To make things easy for my students i designed our classroom box so it would be able to work on the size of a standard 8 5 x 11 piece of paper.

How to weld a sheet metal box.

Clean the box with a paper towel and some acetone. The box i have my students create in class ends up being 5 5 x 2 x 3 5. The patterns for a cardboard box will look very similar to what you need to plan out for the sheet metal box. Making a patch panel take some time to make your patch a perfect fit.

Take the sander and carefully polish the weld. Then finsih the joint from the inside so your gtaw tip can cross from one side to the other. Lay the bottom on the ground and weld the two ends on first. Clamp the folded corner into a jog or fixture tightly to hold the corner square and pretty then try to tack first weld from the inside at at least two locations.

Place the sander orthogonal to each surface do not polish directly onto the corner because it will weaken the weld. Lay out the panels for your box on the sheet metal using the measuring tape and the permanent marker. Hi guys say i want to make a simple sheet metal box preferably with the top edges. Don t attempt to weld thin materials like sheet metal with flux cored wires which put more heat into the base metal.

First i create a gap and groove weld to close things up and then a fillet weld to reflect what i really want it to look like. To weld sheet metal with solid wires use electrode positive ep or reverse polarity. The best way to weld sheet metal panels together is by butt welding which is joining them side by side see picture below. Tig welding sheet metal forget the larger 1 8 inch tungsten electrode and use a smaller one.

I applied a thin layer of lacquer to finish the box but this is optional. Step 2 use the cutting torch to cut out each panel and then grind the edges smooth with the hand held grinder.