Overview
Texas Metal Works now offers our precision fabrication tables in stainless steel. These are the exact same designs used in our steel line, but built from 304 stainless steel.
In addition to the stainless top, these fully-assembled tables come standard with powder-coated legs, ensuring a layer of protection even between the top and the carbon steel tubing in the legs. It also happens to make them beautiful, and ensures you never have to worry about rust.
There is only one drawback to stainless as a material for fabrication tables – it’s non-magnetic. So you can use all of the standard tools for fixturing, with the exception of magnets.
Overview Video
Details
Here are some things you’ll definitely want to know about our stainless welding tables:
- Our tops feature holes made for 5/8″ / 16mm tooling, and our holes are spaced on 2″ centers covering the entire surface including the sidewalls.
- Our legs and cross braces are all 100% laser cut for perfect balance. They include many extra holes to allow for optional accessories, or whatever you can come up with!
- The standard top height is 38″. This is with either leveling feet, or casters. We adjust the leg length to maintain that height.
- The load bearing capacity of our leveling feet is 1,800 lbs. per ft.
- Our casters are rated at 1,000 lbs. per caster.
- Each caster has grease zerks for easy maintenance, and the swivel casters lock in both the swivel and rolling directions.
- The stainless tops are only available in 1/4″ top thickness. If you have a batch requirement that needs something different reach out to us and we’ll accommodate.
- All of our table tops have lines etched in a 2″ grid pattern over the entire surface. They’re useful, and beautiful! 🙂
316 Part Manufacturer’s Note
We get asked if it’s Ok to build parts made from 316 stainless on a 304 surface, or if it will cause contamination. Well, good news – 304 and 316 are both austenitic stainless steels; sharing the same work surface is standard practice so long as you maintain it properly and avoid introducing carbon steel contamination.
Welding Table Construction
Read our full article: How We Build Super Flat Welding Tables
The strength of a Texas Metal Works weld table comes from the interlocking series of ribs supporting the surface. These precision cut ribs lock together and also interlock with the table surface.
As you might guess, fabricating a huge table with precision requires extraordinary effort and a lot of practice. But we also augment our fabricator’s experience with the best tools available. In addition to using 142 bolts, 132 feet of threaded rod, 63 fixturing plates and making hundreds welds – we also fabricate all of our table on a heavy duty milled reference surface!
You can read a complete discussion of our welding table build process here, but the short version is that we start out by securely bolting every table top directly to a precision milled surface.
Only after securing the top to a reference surface do we add the ribs and sidewalls and secure them by bolting everything firmly in place before locking it in with hundreds of weld points.
At the end of the day, we’re not happy until we can lay a level across the surface and visually verify that there is almost no (or none whatsoever) daylight peeking through.
Related Information
- Everything you ever needed to know about welding tables.
- Accessories that work well with our welding tables.
- Understanding welding table flatness.
- Optional base shelf (be sure to pick the correct size!)
Notes on Shipping
As you can imagine, these massive tables can be a little challenging to ship and receive. When we ship any of our tables the carriers require us to put them on a pallet. But normal pallets won’t work, so we manufacture custom pallets specifically for shipping these bad boys.
Each table is bolted directly to a custom pallet with heavy-duty hex head screws to ensure it stays put during transport. If you choose the option with casters or purchase accessories, they’ll be placed in a box and safely strapped to the pallet.
Blue heat shrink wrap is used to protect the tabletop against dust and water. It also serves as the perfect visual indicator of topside damage resulting from delivery. We encourage customers to fully inspect their tables upon delivery and before signing the trucking company’s Bill of Laden.
Pallets are loaded onto a truck at our dock via forklift, and we use long fork extensions to put them in the truck. Shipping companies only carry a small pallet jack on the truck, and those jacks can reposition many of our tables up to our 40×80 size. Larger tables can’t easily be moved via pallet jack. So on the receiving end, it’s going to require a similar setup for unloading purposes.
Please note: If you don’t have a forklift, you’ll need to purchase optional Liftgate Services.
At a bare minimum, you’ll need 48″ forks to lift the table out of the truck. For our 40×80 or larger tables, we recommend 72″ or 84″ fork extensions. Amazon sells a bunch of extensions in case you need them. We’ve used these 72″ fork extensions to get the job done, and these 84″ fork extensions work even better. When buying forklift extensions pay particular attention to the width of your forks to make sure you get the right size!
If you can get heavier duty fork extensions we HIGHLY recommend it! Especially if you order your table along with several accessories that will ship on top. The tables plus accessories can often exceed 1,000 pounds, and the light-duty extensions may flex or bend. Please contact us if you have any concerns about receiving, or if we need to make special plans to get things delivered safely!
