welding lead roller upper

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HI guys... I know some of you have figured this out... help me....I work for a industrial piping contractor doing commercial/industrial piping and maintenance... lots of our work is outage work in steel mills, plants etc. We tool up and trailer everything we can imagine using to the site nice and neat... but when it returns to the shop it's one tangled nasty mess all thrown in the trailers. wet...dry...greasy...broken...smashed. One of the jobs I hate is untangling and rerolling welding leads... sometimes hundreds of feet of heavy 2/0 to 4/0 welding leads that are kinked, twisted and heavy. Mostly we coil them up on the floor as best we can and lay it on pallets... but it wastes a lot of space...I"m looking to make a welding lead roller where you can stick one end of the lead on the spool, wind it up neatly in a compact package, tape or cable tie it together.... remove the side of the roller spool...and then REMOVE the neat roll of welding lead from the roller for storage... preferably like a roll of garden hose at the home depot. Most lead lengths are in the 50-100 foot length there is just a lot of them !!!  Weight is anywhere from 50-100 #s per length depending on wire sizeI know they sell them and they are expensive... this needs to be a shop fabbed project to save money. (I have a "frugal" bossman) It doesn"t have to be powered...can be manually turned... fairlead would be nice but not absolutely necessary...I know they make fence wire rollers... most seem to be hydraulic operated and again...expensive... My major hurdle is the spool having a removable side ???  I'm trying to think how to use a automotive hub/wheel... I can invision using a plasma cutter to split the rim into two pieces  and fabbing a cone shaped center spool but haven't gotten down to the joining of the two pieces and have easy removal yet...  plans on my mental drawing board keep getting erased when  something else shiney comes along !!!so ?? who"s got pictures/plans/ideas thanksJohn
Reply:Have you ever bought any wire from home depot that they cut from the spool?  They have a table with a reel on it.  They wrap the wire around the reel once and then tape it to itself.  Then they hand wind the reel and tape the wire when they done.  Then one side of the reel(rods of metal) fold towards the center and then you can pull the wire off in a roll.  I never thought about making one so haven't looked at them real close but I'm sure if you go in and look at it would be pretty simple to make one.  You can go to home depot and have them cut 10-15 feet of telephone wire or some other cheap wire to see how it works.
Reply:Check with your local phone company. They use a spool for drop and "C" wire that is just what you are looking for. You could take pictures and copy the design.
Reply:Old thread, but what the heck.What you are looking for can be found at farm/ranch supply stores.  Used to UN-roll coils of high-tension fence wire in a controlled fashion.  Mostly like what they use at home depot, but larger and available for sale !MillerMatic 252, HTP 221 w/cooler, Hypertherm PM45, Lincoln IdealArc 250 AC/DC"I'd like to believe as many true things and as few false things as possible"
Reply:I use a 15" rim off a car. Stick it on a piece of pipe for an axle, cut a hole in the sidewall big enough to poke the connector through and give her a spin
Reply:use a piece of 12" pipe, maybe 18" long. on the side you want the removable edge, weld ( 4 )  1/2" nuts to the inside of trhe pipe .make a piece of 1/4" plate with matching holes and bolt it to the pipe ..roll the sucker, unbolt the plate and there you go..
Reply:Sounds like the key feature Jniolon needs is a spindle which can be collapsed once the cable is coiled, thus allowing easy removal of the coiled cable from the spindle. About the way an electric motor rewinding machine's hub collapses to allow for easy coil removal, after winding a neat tight bundle.The spindle doesn't have to be round to neatly coil cable.Two separate pieces that can be collapsed or spread would work. It could be as simple as two long bolts with nuts, in a slotted drive plate.For a spindle, maybe  use pipe which is split in two lengthwise. A flange and slotted plate at the hub end of the pipe would allow spindle collapse, for easy coil removal. The design could be refined with a spreader-screw to adjust the spindle diameter.If all this were mounted to the shaft of a 3600rpm motor, it would allow for very rapid coiling of 50' leads. Good LuckLast edited by denrep; 09-26-2009 at 09:27 AM.