Nice welds on the I-beam!
Thanks Bruce S
My table is a tilt top that I made about 30 years ago to serve as a fit up table by adding or removing fixtures as needed.
The stiffening spine is an 8 inch wide flange beam.
Since I needed something very straight and a means to clamp the pieces of the beams together using the spine of the table seemed the most logical thing to do by adding a pair of pipes to the ends then adding a pair of 1" all thread for the clamping screws I then welded 2 larger diameter pipes to the ends of another beam to become the top clamp. Then some pipes with tabs sticking out on them to position the web.
All I had to do was to tilt the table to its side and drop in the 3 components of the beam to be welded clamped it down.
Tacked everything together Slightly warmed the pieces then skip welded it together rotating the table form 45° on one side and then the other until all 4 sides had been skip welded then kept rotating until all 4 sides were welded out 100%.
Leaving it in the fixture until cooled. The pair of beams I made are straight and true and square to one another to within 0.030" in 8 feet the flanges are parallel to within 0.05° Short of milling a beam there is no way that I can see to get a fabricated member and truer.
A few of the reasons why I made my own beams was #1 the size I required for my design does not exist unless 1 flange is milled on both sides #2 the strength I would have had to have used 8" tall wide flange to achieve the strength that I will have in my 5" beams and design parameters met with an 8" tall beam
#3 straightness steel mill run beams are never all that straight from the mill let alone after they have been chained down to a trailer for transport.