how to cut metal tubing angles

[Ray2210]

Deerlope what do you mean a roll bar should never be welded? He wants to make a roll cage. Virtually all racing roll cages are weled. And I mean ALOT of welds. Next time you are around a drag car, stock car, dirt track car, etc have a look at the roll cage. There is welding on those that takes days and days to complete. I've watched drivers walk away from 200 + MPH crashes because of those welded cages.

 

[HGM]

I believe he means the actual main loop. The braces prety much have to be welded.. Though the weld is strong, the process might weaken the metal around it. I'm not a welder, but I have been told this before. Plus I've spent some time in a Holiday Inn Express /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif.

 

[Ray2210]

A cage on a tractor is going to be a relatively thick walled mild steel. If a guy can weld reasonably well it's gonna be tough to weaken any surrounding metal. Now if fatigue conditions, material alloy or heat treating were issues of concern it would be another matter. Weld away.

 

[MikeD74T]

Isn't saying "a roll bar should never be welded" kind of like saying it's illegal to remove the tag from a mattress? Obviously anything that weakens the bar increases risk of injury but welding doesn't necessarily weaken. With any engineered system modification changes the basis for the design but doesn't always detract from it. Sorry to pick on anyone but "never" is a long time. 99.9% of the tractors ever built never needed a ROPS. Just like 99.9% of automotive airbags go to the junk yard intact. Just be grown up enough to understand, minimize, accept the risk associated with your modifications. That's how man stood on the moon.

 

[RedRocker]

Most welding supply houses have a clamp on or wrap around pattern you can put on tube and pipe to mark the notch for cutting. An inexpensive method is one of those hole saw fixtures that cope tubeing. If you know what you're doing, it's OK to weld on your roll bar. Here's what I did to mine.

 

[HomeBrew2]

Just found a little app for printing your own templates: www.damonrinard.com/tubemiter.exe. (I did not make it a hotlink due to the fact that it's an exe file. Use appropriate caution. I had no probs.)
It is way too cool!
Cheers!

 

[HomeBrew2]

ok, it got posted as a hotlink anyway, whatever ...

 

[JerryG]

For the tube miter go to this site and then look at the bottom of the page.

 

[JerryG]

BTW, thank for the link. I did have that little program and used it several times until I had a hard drive crash and lost it.

 

[HomeBrew2]

Thanks, Jerry, and you're welcome. Also copying and pasting my [dead] link gets you to it directly which was my original intension.