willynilly
Well-Known Member
The OP says nothing about purging out the welds. How many down supports, ect...
Your stand specs are pretty vague. A 7 foot span using the 1.5" X 1/8" wall will deflect by 1 1/4" in the center with the 2000lbs evenly distributed across it. That's with no center support which, I am sure you plan to do. Given that I am not an engineer I am not sure if you can count the tubing that will be along the bottom as additional wall height to help with deflection. Seeing how this will be on casters and all. It seems to me the load will just be transferred to that tubing. You'll gain some rigidity with the supports connecting them I suppose. If you increase the tubing too 3 X 1 or 1.5 you will only have 1/4" deflection with the same load.
I guess I was trying to be little more specific then you want this thread to be. Sorry. I'll be on the side for the rest of the build.
Take care.
The stand will consist of a box frame, but the upper spans (7') will have THREE supports across the span, under each vessel, delivering load to the lower (7') spans.
The stand will never be supporting 2000 pounds, that would be an all out max. It is made to support the weights listed in the OP. There is also a real possibility that there will be 6 casters delivering load to the floor. Three across the front, three a across the back, under each vessel.
The weight that it will actually be carrying is:
100 pounds of grain (a larger grain bill than they will ever have loaded)
40 gallons of wort in the boil
50 gallon compliment of brew water (for starting another batch while the first is boiling)
Add about 30 pounds per kettle for the kettle weight...
The total weight that the stand will have to support, is under 1000 pounds. (970) Their grain bills will be closer to a max of 70 pounds unless they are doing something crazy special.
The NEMA 4X box will hang off the back and the pumps will be slung under in a saddle config as they were on my last rig.
I dont know that you can consider the weight distributed evenly across one span either. It will actually be 4 spans. You have the load on the top front 7' span, the top rear 7' span, along with the two bottom spans that are connected via vertical supports to the upper spans.
Essentially with the supports, it is across four parallel spans, of course you can count that. Then, you also have to consider that MOST of the weight is at the ends of the span where there are direct vertical supports to casters delivering load to the floor. All of that should be taken into consideration. I could place 1000 pounds at each end, directly over the verticals and casters and I guarantee you there would not be 1.25" deflection in the center. Load placement in relation to the casters (where the load is delivered to the floor) is a very important factor, along with realizing that there are actually (4) 7' spans supporting the load, not one.
When it is built, we will fill each vessel to capacity and I will post the deflection on the upper 7' span and we can compare that to your 1.25" deflection number.
Then again, all those years at school could have been completely wasted on me!