motorized turntable ?

[FABMAN]

guys,
have any of you made a lazy suzan style turntable thats motorized ?
im looking to make a small one so i can mount my tig gun to a bracket, and have the part rotate, and do some consistent fusion welds.
where would you ground it ? would i need to use a special bearing ?
would it want to lock the bearing up ?
thanks for any help, and pics would be greatly appreciated.

[snowbird]

motorised turn-table

Mr.Fabman, i just made mine last January and did not have time to try it that much,
for now, i am far from mastering it... a moving puddle is quite hard to follow, probably with more (may be a lot) practice and diferent set-ups i will get some acceptable results.

I used a wiper motor to power it coupled to a 20:1 angle gear box one inch output shaft, had to reduce output from wiper motor to gearbox input with some timing belt
and pulleys. it has to run pretty slow... depending on what diameter you weld it is
fractionals r.p.m. (i read on an other forum a feed of .125 in. /second for tig welding, sorry i do not remember what type of material or thickness etc...)

for the ground i went to the electrical auto rebuilder next door and he provided me
a truck starter brush holder 24v. 37mt. it fits perfectly on 1- to 1.25 in. diam shaft. i bought a conttroller from robot shop.com and power-it from a 12 volt booster pack.
i currently don't have tech infos with me but at shop i have and some pictures too. if you are interested i will post-them.

[FABMAN]

thanks for the info snowbird, and yes, if you could post some pics that would help.
just gathering ideas and info now..

[mcostello]

Seen a thread "somewhere" that a guy used one of the lead covered ground cables from a tractor and just wrapped it around the shaft and held it with a spring.

[fabricator]

Special ground clamps are made for rotary weld positioners.They contain a bearing in them. I think Lennox makes them. It seems like just buying a used positioner would be the way to go.

[fabricator]

Here is a Sumner brand. Sumner 780435 Rotary Ground Clamp ST-107 400amp

[snowbird]

the promised picts.

Mr. fabman here are some pics, i had a long text wich i lost during picture uploading and now i am running out of time, will post more pics and text specs later.

i will try to familiarize with the forum procedures, ahhh learning...an endless process.

[Burnt hands]

FABMAN,

Here are some photos of a home-made welding turntable I made as I needed to do a bunch of tube to flat plate welds.

Plus I always wanted one so the project gave me a chance to build the unit.

I had the right angle gear reducer for 20 years sitting in my basement so I had to figure out how to adapt it. It is 1725 to 1 ratio.

First test was to get a friend to time me as I turned a lazy susan to simulate tigging a flange. Took 40 seconds to make a full circle.

Works out to 1.67 rpm so I decided to make mine to cover 1 to 2 RPM range.

With a 1725:1 ratio, I found a 3600 rpm motor to fit my reducer.

Got my love joy couplers and various bushings and bearings from www.reidtool.com.

The motor is 12 volt DC so I rigged up a speed control from ebay and a foot control from www.ssccontrols.com and I was set.

You can see my bozo kludging mess but it works.

The hard part for me is to remember that my left foot controls the motor speed while my right foot controls the tig current.

Add to that the left hand feeding tig wire and right hand controlling the tig torch and it gets interesting.


Hope this helps.

[FABMAN]

thanks for the info and pics snowbird and burnt hands, much appreciated.
im hoping to rid something a little simpler, since i i dont have any of those parts laying around.... but i now have the info to move forward.
thanks again

[popspipes]

guys,
have any of you made a lazy suzan style turntable thats motorized ?
im looking to make a small one so i can mount my tig gun to a bracket, and have the part rotate, and do some consistent fusion welds.
where would you ground it ? would i need to use a special bearing ?
would it want to lock the bearing up ?
thanks for any help, and pics would be greatly appreciated.

I just took some pics of mine, kind of a hodge podge but works well, I have used this one forever here in the shop......

[MD Welding]

I used a piece of copper spring loaded on the main shaft like a motor brush. I soldered a battery cable into the copper block. You can just see it in the 1st pick.