Welding a nut into thin-wall steel

[tjkubota93]

Good idea

 

[Gordon Gould]

Looks good to me. Nothing wrong with a novel approach in my book.

gg

 

[Renze]

Anyways. For serious load transfer like the coupler of my trailer to the 2 by 4 inch tubes, i drilled 13mm holes for the bolts on one end, and 20mm on the other so i could put some sleeves around the bolts, welded on the end where the big hole was. This way you can tighten the bolts properly without denting the tube, or getting so much spring action that the bolts run loose

 

[PILOON]

Riv-nuts come in 2 styles.
Plain and then the better style that need a small key way (or notch).
The riv-but then has a dimple that fits the notch.
We used the notch style a lot in thin aluminum on aircraft.
In fact I still have a set of 4 notch cutters as well as the pullers in my tool box.
The largest is 1/4" and the others 6, 8, 10 X 32.

The riv-nuts would have to be installed from inside the tube to keep it from pulling out, and might wallow out its mounting hole in this application.
I've always rounded nuts off in the drill press with an angle grinder to put in tubing, or if there are a lot of them, I've welded nuts on a thin strip of flat bar and positioned it inside the tube and secured it with plug welds next to the bolt holes. That works quite well on something that is already finished, as the small plug welds cause less finish burn.

 

[square1]

A round hole has far greater integrity than one with squared or jagged corners.

 

[CanDo]

Looks good to me. Nothing wrong with a novel approach in my book.

gg

Ditto! I agree with Gordon. Gotta love any new idea that can be added to one's repertoire. Thanks for sharing Sodo! :thumbsup:

 

[bdog]

A round hole has far greater integrity than one with squared or jagged corners.

While I agree with that it won't matter much once it is welded up.

 

[orezok]

A round hole has far greater integrity than one with squared or jagged corners.

But after it's welded, there is no "hole".

 

[GLyford]

It's just thin wall...just how high a load are you going to run on that?

I suspect any load situation where this setup is not sufficient will run into structural problems with the _rest_ of the tubing long before it is an issue.