Stand Thickness

Hi All

I'm going to build a new stand for the tank and was wondering about the thickness of the square tubing. The tank dimensions are :

L = 1750mm
W = 540mm
H = 600mm
Glass = 10mm

Will 32mm square tubing be sufficient? I plan on going this weekend to get the material, will post pics on the progress as I go along.

Many thanks.

 

I think it should be.. Mine is made from about the same size steel. And the tank takes about 30lt less water than the size you specified..
I would suggest putting center supports as well..

 

32mm will be fine the wieght of the glass is 114kg and the full wieght is 681kg

 

Would say that is ok ,,, 2nd the center brace for the top and the bottom of the frame ...

 

to ensure overall strength use 2mm thick square tubing...

it will need 2 uprights in the centre to provide support

 

this is how i would do it

just a quick sketch and its not to scale

 

1.6mm sqaure tubing will be fine on the above plan, i hope u can weld properly

 

Hi All

Thanks for the replies. I am planning to have legs in the middle, will this be enough? There will also be a support going across the middle on the top. See a very rough sketch of it, please dont laugh at drawing, it was done in 5 minutes on Windows Paint!!


I plan on the 2mm (as advised) 32mm square tubin all around, then using angle iron about 30mm in width with a hole drilled on one side, weld this to the inside of the top tubing to screw the base board to the stand, then I'll glue the polystyrene to the base board and build cabinet around the stand.

 

will work for sure

 

Wow Reafer!! That is almost exactly what I have in mind, Thanks dude!!

Thanks all for the advise, much apprecaited.

I was planning on having the bottom support beams quite low, but looking at Reafers drawing it would make more sense to have it closer to the middle to provide more stability. Thanks Reafer and everyone for the advise. I am very excited about this and I have a dead line as the new stand must be complete before the 01/11/09 as the tank must go on the new stand at the new house. Will keep you udpated via pics as and when I have them.

Thanks again.

 

cant wait to check it out

 

will you be galvanizing the stand?

 

or atleast use russist paint and then enamel or somesuch?

 

Hey, was just looking at your design and decided to analyse it for you.
attached are some pics for you, stand0001_calcs.tif are the calcs; stand1.jpg is your proposal and stand2.jpg is what I recommend.

I've actually over estimated the loads in the calcs and the max deflections i found were only 0.06mm. So you'll be fine.

I've shown cross bracing in stand2.jpg, reason being: better safe than sorry. any horizontal force (bumping it accidentally from the front) will cause the stand (680 odd kg's) to sway. it should be fine but the extra cost of steel will be minimal.

Oh another thing, if the price difference between 2mm and 2.5mm isn't much go for 2.5mm, you're less likely to "weld" holes into the steel.

 

Ja with my welding i'll probably need 5 m thick steel

Good luck with the project.

 

Looks like the calcs weren't attached (wrong file type)

Another thing, make sure the legs are put on wood or a base plate to distribute the load, each leg has a point load of about 114kg, that'll crack tiles etc

 

What type of glass you going to use? If you can get your hands on some
UltraWhite or low-iron - WOW

 

Hi All

I am planning on galvinising, would like the stand to last a long time to come and being in Durban fairly close to the beach everything rusts much quicker. Linchpin, thanks for the drawing, it's impossible to do 3D rendering on Paint! I do agree with the cross bracing it makes sense, I'll also be putting a cross bracing on the bottom middle front leg to the middle rear leg and I'll brobably raise the bottom bars slighty for more stability, but don't want it too high as it will serve as the base for the shelf inside the cabinet. I was planning on using some kind of "feet" for the legs, it's been suggested that I use height adjustable feet to make leveling that much easier, but I don't know if you can get height adjustable feet that can hold this kind of weight (app 800kg calculated by Reafer), the only adjustable feet I have seen is on my fridge, those puny things will surely strip under this kind of weight. My other big concern is the new place is on suspended wooden flooring! I am going to have to get under the house to chock it up with some bricks before filling the tank, but I am k@k bang to crawl under the house should a snake or rat decide to take out a chunk of my @rse!! But I do know this has to be done, so I'll cross that bridge when it comes... The stand is being built to replace the stand that the tank came with, so I'm not building a new tank, not at this stage anyway, once MTS kicks in I'm sure there will be a new tank in the making, want to first get this one up and running 100%. So I'm off to buy steel this weekend, anyone in Durban know the best place to go to?

Thanks all for the input, this has been the most helpful forum I have ever been part of, many thanks and you are all great people.

 

looks at the pics te top of the stand has a centre brace , i would do the same for the bottom

 

Hi Donny, will definately have a brace on the bottom as well.