How Our Metal Table Legs Are Made

Most people understand the basic concept of metalworking, involving cutting raw material to length, welding it into its desired shape, then blending the welds and applying a coating to the finished product. But what about the more abstract shapes and designs, like our Avalanche Style base, or more intricate patterns such as our Inverted Diamond Style Metal Table Legs? Below, we’ll give you a little peek inside our operations so you can see how we can manufacture complex shapes and designs repeatedly and efficiently made to any size without using mass production jigs or machinery.

Step #1 – Metal Table Legs Design

If you take a minute and browse through our website, you’ll find over 100 unique designs that we offer for sale. Each one of these can be customized to be made to your exact specifications with the ability to alter the material size, length, width, height, and the color and finish. All in all, this leaves over a trillion possible size combinations for all of our products. The trick to our efficiency is in the design. ECon Welding employs a full-time engineer who creates a 3D model for every design we offer in a professional CAD program. By doing this, we can alter the drawing to the customer specified dimensions and print out a blueprint for this custom design in less than a minute! Even with our more geometric, 3D designs like the Origami Metal Legs or the Architectural Metal Legs, we have a model designed that can be altered to any custom size, then we can use the CAD program to generate a flat pattern that can be exported out to a CNC machine that will cut the pattern from a sheet, then that sheet can be bent based on a blueprint also provided with the computer drawn model.

This process takes some extra time up front to model each design, but it is well worth it in the end, as it gives us the means to efficiently alter all of our designs and still get repeatable results. If you were to go to a local welding shop and ask them to make one of our complex style products, they could probably do it, but if you were to order another one in a year or two, it is highly unlikely you would receive the exact same product.

Step #2 – Cutting of the raw material

This step may seem trivial, but something we learned early on is that to make a set of metal table legs that gives a high end, sleek look, the cuts need to be precise. Not all of our joints are fully welded, some of the seams are left open to leave a sharp corner. If the cut is even slightly off square, there will be a visible gap at these seams. While this may not stand out as highly visible at first glance, it will give the overall product a “cheap” feel to it. For the more complex shapes, getting the cut length and angles precise are also important, otherwise the shape will not come out how it’s supposed to, and will look sloppy.

We use several different types of saws here, including bandsaws and cold saws, all of which are semi-automatic and are kept in tune to give repeatable, straight, and accurate cuts. We also utilize calibrated stop gauges to ensure the part lengths are within 0.01″ of what they are supposed to be.

Step #3 – Layout and Weld Preparation

This step mainly serves as a “double checker” before the product is fully welded, but it is crucial to avoid wasted time and material. The parts are laid out according to the blueprint, and then measured with those measurements being compared to the order to ensure accuracy. Once verified, the metal parts are all deburred and cleaned to get a clean weld, free from impurities.

One important aspect that we utilize here that is often overlooked is a flat work surface. Making products on a garage floor, or a makeshift work table is suitable for some applications, for table legs or table bases, maintaining flatness is very important. While our products do account for uneven surfaces and include adjustable leveling feet, and set of metal table legs that are not flat can be made to work, but they will look sloppy. Our work surfaces are made from heavy wall tubing sub frames with a 5/8″ thick structural steel plate shimmed, and bolted down to each frame. This method allows us to independently adjust the steel plate throughout its surface, so we can level and flatten dips or raised sections in the plate as the plate is worked on. After the top is flattened, we level the table.

Step #4 – Welding

It’s a common misconception that welding shops are always welding. The actual welding of our metal table legs is typically less than 25% of the total amount of time spent in the product fabrication. While this part is usually pretty straightforward, understanding how the heat of the weld will move the metal is crucial. We cannot simply weld everything together and expect the end results to be perfect. The arc of a weld can easily reach 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, which is necessary to properly fuse the metal together, but this heat is localized at the joint of the weld. The remainder of the metal part near the weld is not heating up nearly as much. Since the metal expands as it heats up, it causes the metal to parts to move as they are being welded. Theoretically they should move back as the temperature cools, but this is rarely the case. Understanding how, and where the metal will move as the parts are welded is a valuable skill that all of our fabricators possess.

Employing skilled welders and fabricators is another aspect that really sets us apart from our competition. We don’t use jigs in our product setups and all of our welders are skilled in making metal table legs and bases that maintain their shape, even through the welding and fabricating process. We strongly believe in focusing on skilled labor as it drives a high attention to detail and puts out a much higher quality part than assembly line type work.

Step #5 – Grinding and Blending the Welds

This is the step where we really shine when compared with our competition. When the metal is welded, the weld contracts slightly. As it does this, it pulls in the metal from the conjoining components. While this is not initially visible, it does create a very minor “valley” on either side of the weld. Because of this, when you grind down the weld, you will need to gouge into the base metal underneath the weld in order to blend in the joint with these “valleys” formed by the weld contraction. Long story short, it creates an unsightly gouge every joint on the metal table legs if you rush through the blending process. In order to prevent this, these “valleys” are filled in with weld, and ground down. Sometimes even these filler welds will create their own set of valleys, so every single weld needs to go through a series of weld -> grind -> weld the “valleys” to fill them in -> grind again and repeat as necessary until the ground down joint is flat and smooth to the surrounding metal components.

This is easily the most hated process here in the shop, but our entire team fully understands how important this painstakingly tedious process is. This is the step that gives our products a high end, seamless look. We have metal table legs that take only 1-2 hours to cut, clean, layout, and weld together, but then take an additional 6-8 hours of grinding to get a seamless appearance. We are firm believers that the devil is in the details, which is why we go the extra mile to focus on these details in order to deliver a product that is worthy to be showcased in your build.

Step #6 – Finishing

The final step here in the process of making metal table legs and metal table bases is the finishing. This step used to be the bane of our existence. We would spend hours, sometimes days, making a metal table base of impeccable quality just to have the final piece ruined by a poor paint job. We have since taken a great deal of effort to improve our finishing process. Properly sanding, degreasing, and cleaning the metal prior to finishing is a vital step, as is using quality finishes that are designed to be applied to metal. We do all of our finishing in house, which includes our powder coated finishes. There are many different ways to finish a set of metal table legs, including leaving them raw, clear coating them, applying a painted finish, or a powder coated finish. We also offer some custom finishes including acid-based finishes such as blackening, or artificially aging the metal, as well as distressed finishes. On our stainless products, we offer in house stainless finishing including brushed and polished stainless steel finishes.

Our finish options are all tried and true options. We only offer options we know we can apply with a level of quality that matches our manufacturing standards and that will last. All finish options have their own unique set of pros and cons. So if you’re not sure on what type of a finish you need, it’s always best to Contact Us for a recommendation.

Conclusion

The main takeaway here is that we are committed to delivering a quality product. We know we’re not the cheapest option, but the additional amount you are spending on our products is going into a higher quality product. We want you to be 100% satisfied with your purchase and to be able to purchase our products without any worry, which is why we offer a 2 year warranty on all of our metal table legs and everything else we make as well as a LIFETIME satisfaction guarantee. Our team is excited to come to work each morning to produce high end metal table legs that are featured all over the world. Contact Us today and let us put a high end, heirloom quality piece of metal artwork in your home!