January Jig

BTR Fabrications Alignment Table Machining

I guess we’ve appeared a bit quiet so far this year, but the truth is we’ve been anything but quiet!

The major excitement has been the arrival of our newest tool, and all the work we’ve done to turn industrial equipment into a dedicated frame building tool.

Something we’ve been lusting after for a while now has been a fully fledged frame alignment table.  We spend a long time manually checking the alignment of our frames using a straight edge, frame alignment tool, and various bodgers and badgers, but it takes ages and isn’t nearly as satisfactory as having a fixed datum plane to check against.  ‘Proper’ purpose-built alignment tables are megabucks (well, about $6000 before shipping, etc), so we came up with another solution!

We bought a half-tonne engineering surface table, and set about making all of the attachments we needed to accurately check a frame on it.  Here are some pictures from the build…

Took a days work to get to this stage- table uprighted and the worst of the rust cleaned off
Took a days work to get to this stage- table uprighted and the worst of the rust cleaned off
Dirty, dirty, dirty blanks for the bases of the uprights
Dirty, dirty, dirty blanks for the bases of the uprights
Clean blanks!
Clean blanks!
So shiny! ...well, they may have a bit of GT85 to keep rust away...
So shiny! …well, they may have a bit of GT85 to keep rust away…
A bit of a funky setup to get at all the major points without moving the bar in the chuck, but it worked a treat in the end!
A bit of a funky setup to get at all the major points without moving the bar in the chuck, but it worked a treat in the end!
The upright for the rear axle, before having the axle holder attached
The upright for the rear axle, before having the axle holder attached
The major uprights for the table, finished
The major uprights for the table, finished
The majority of the table attachments
The majority of the table attachments
Can ya tell what it is yet??
Can ya tell what it is yet??
Threaded holes, away into the distance...
Threaded holes, away into the distance…

 

A pointillism penis! How creative...
A pointillism penis! How creative…
As you do, with a floor standing pillar drill. No mag drills here!
As you do, with a floor standing pillar drill. No mag drills here!
Excitement/boredom got too much during drilling- I had to stop and bolt the BB tower on!
Excitement/boredom got too much during drilling- I had to stop and bolt the BB tower on!
Last hole!!
Last hole!!
The table and the major attachments
The table and the major attachments
A wee shelf for all the gubbins
A wee shelf for all the gubbins
No hammering here; a big lever for plenty control
No hammering here; a big lever for plenty control

We’ve had a couple of frames on the table already, and it’s beautiful to be able to accurately and quickly check the alignment of every point on the frame.  There’s still a few little attachments we need, but it’s fair to say that I’m more than a little bit proud of this creation already!

Cheers,

Tam

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