Welder Cart

I picked up a new welder and needed a cart for it. I've built carts in the past that just took care of holding the welder, cylinder and hoses. This time I wanted something that would hold all my extra supplies, hood and welder specific tools. I'd seen a few pictures of carts built out of file cabinets, but that wasn't quite what I wanted. So I started with a Husky rolling toolbox that I picked up on sale at Home Depot and used that as the starting point.

Step 1: The Pieces

Ok, so it looks like this would work in the most basic way. Just a purchased tool chest with a welder sitting on it. But there is no place to put the gas cylinders.

Step 2: The Bottle Rack

First thing that needed to be added was a rack to hold 2 bottles since I need both AR/CO2 mix and pure argon. Unbolted the 8 bolts that old on the 2 fixed castors and used those holes to bolt on a 3/16" thick piece of plate steel - with some spacers so that it would clear the bottom of the box. I also decided to weld it to the lower seam of the toolbox.

Once that was done, pieces of angle iron were run along both sides on the bottom as both supports and as a place to install the axle for the new rear wheels. A hand bent piece of 3/16 x 3" steel was added to retain the bottoms of the bottles.

The upper bottle mount was a purchased piece that was designed to be wall mounted and hold helium bottles. It was a waste of $30 since I wound up cutting it apart to narrow it to fit the toolbox width. It was welded to a piece of 3/16 x 3" steel which was drilled to utilize the 4 existing nutcerts on the toolbox that are meant to hold the stock handle.

The next step shows how all the bottom steel was installed a little better

Step 3: Some Paint

The pictures show a little better how the bottom tray was built and how the axle is installed. The axle is just a piece of all thread that was left long until the wheels were installed.

All the new steel was painted with some spray bedliner in a can that was close to the wrinkle finish of the toolbox. Used a couple coats.

Step 4: Finishing Touches

Bought a set of 10" pneumatic wheels/tires for $7 a piece at the local Harbor freight. Those were installed with nylock nuts on the axle and then the axle was cut down to length. Added 2 hose/cord hangers to hold the power cords and the mig gun/ground line.

Also added the wood top that was a toolbox option after realizing that the top of the box wasn't really designed to put a lot of weight in the middle without it. All the strength was at the edges for adding a top tool box or the board which distributes the load.

Still need to pick up the argon bottle to add to the other side of the rack. The pictured AR/CO2 bottle is a 125CF bottle with a 7" diameter. I'm pretty sure that a larger 9" diameter bottle would fit, but that starts to be a lot of weight and I don't weld enough to need that. If you were to use the larger bottles I would recommend using solid tires rather than the pneumatic ones I used.