Post by Deleted on Jan 28, 2016 0:36:35 GMT
I am concerned about the weight of the steel decks i can and have made. The 1/4" thick steel is quite adequate for an industrial work space or vehicle parking or any lighter duty. It's really overkill for a residence. But i have some 3/16" and some 1/8" plate laying around too. The idea is the 1/8" plate is 1/2 the weight of the 1/4" plate deck i am performing work on now. I can carry twice as much deck area on the big trailer if the deck is made of 1/8" plate. But of course the 1/8" plate isn't a suitable deck for industrial work.
As an experiment, i made a 4ft wide 16ft long section of deck using 1/8" plate steel. I tack welded 1.25"x1/8" steel on edge across the 4ft dimension, every 12" the length of 16ft. I then added substancial temp supports under the 1.25" at the 16ft edges and down the middle of the 16ft.
Then i went walkabout on it. The 1.25" is plenty strong, stepping where i had welded those was like a concrete slab, no sense or sight of movement. Stepping only on the spaces between the 1.25" was a different matter in four places. In those four places, if i stepped down on one space between the 1.25", it went down and an adjacent space would pop up noisily, and stepping on that space popped back up the space i had just stepped on. This is unacceptable to me.
So 6" spacing of the 1.25" is called for? That's getting closer to the overall weight of using 3/16" plate. And it's a lot of welding. Welding invariably requires a lot of clamping, and this would be 128 feet of 1.25"x1/8" to clamp and tack weld, per 4ft x 16ft section (max size i can drag down the road on the trailer is 8ft x 16ft).
As an experiment, i made a 4ft wide 16ft long section of deck using 1/8" plate steel. I tack welded 1.25"x1/8" steel on edge across the 4ft dimension, every 12" the length of 16ft. I then added substancial temp supports under the 1.25" at the 16ft edges and down the middle of the 16ft.
Then i went walkabout on it. The 1.25" is plenty strong, stepping where i had welded those was like a concrete slab, no sense or sight of movement. Stepping only on the spaces between the 1.25" was a different matter in four places. In those four places, if i stepped down on one space between the 1.25", it went down and an adjacent space would pop up noisily, and stepping on that space popped back up the space i had just stepped on. This is unacceptable to me.
So 6" spacing of the 1.25" is called for? That's getting closer to the overall weight of using 3/16" plate. And it's a lot of welding. Welding invariably requires a lot of clamping, and this would be 128 feet of 1.25"x1/8" to clamp and tack weld, per 4ft x 16ft section (max size i can drag down the road on the trailer is 8ft x 16ft).