At Nashville Tools for Schools, one of the least favorite tasks is to manually clean the metal that is used to make the metal support for rectangular tables. The metal comes from source coated in oil which must be removed with solvent before it can be welded and/or painted. This requires meticulously wiping down every surface of the metal bars with the solvent. Not hard but BORING.
There are soaking tanks that can be purchased for this purpose, but they are expensive and often for smaller pieces than needed for the tables. So Craig decided to undertake fabrication of large piece of equipment that would eliminate the need for manual cleaning of the metal pieces. This has been a labor of “love” for the past 2 weeks. In stimulating his creative and problem solving juices, he was able to pull his attention away for the daily depressing news for several hours at a time.
He was able to source most of the parts from the many, many things he has collected in his shop over the decades. He did need to purchase the soaking tank. He found a great metal oblong metal box with a hinged, rubber sealing lid long enough for the pieces that NTFS uses at a very reasonable price. Unfortunately what was delivered did not have a hinged, rubber sealed lid. As it turns out, the price on the tank that he purchased was an error and they sent the box that went with the price. Craig sent a very polite letter back to company and asked for the product he ordered at the price he ordered it which was on his invoice and still on their website. I was curious how they respond but they agreed to pay to ship the wrong tank back and send the tank he ordered if he paid for the shipping of the second, correct tank. This was still a great deal over what the correct list price was.
In the meantime, he used an old bed frame to make the metal support frame to hold the tank and secured it to a wooded platform on wheels so it could be moved around. The metal bed frame is a lot thinner metal that what he is used to working with so his welding skills improved. Once the tank arrived he had to customize it for the following functions. The soaking solvent needed to be pumped out, filtered and then pumped back into the opposite end of the tank to move the solvent from one end to the other to improve cleaning. While the filtered solvent can be reused for a long time, eventually it will need to be changed so he added a drain to the tank.
He fabricated a metal box for the pump that was placed inside the tank with a hose pumping the solvent out.
On the right side, there is the power source for the motor to pump the solvent through a red diesel fuel filter. The filter exit hose is secured along the underside of the tank to the opposite end where it is pumped back into the tank. He installed a switch to easily operate the pump.
On the opposite end is the faucet where the filtered solvent is pumped back into the tank and the drain in the corner. Below is the yellow on/off valve for easy drainage.
The final step was to install some crosswise bars along the bottom of the tank so the solvent can circulate under the pieces. There are extra pieces of rebar in a purple container on the outside to lay down between the multiple layers of the metal pieces to ensure the solvent can do its work.
Today he has had the pump on for several hours and it is working well.
We can’t wait for the next order for tables to come in so the guys at Tools can enjoy NOT having to manually clean the metal.
Tamara Unleashed 