Carbon steel or stainless

hello,
i can get high end stuff for pressure vessels, i.e. very strong and good toughness for shock and impact and good weldability. (pipe i think)

should i get carbon steel and paint it or is stainless enough to bother with, is there any good reason to use it besides looks?

also should I spend all the time to tie the seats in or should i just tie the roll cage in right behind the seats and near the axle?
:JEEP:

 

i would imagine stainless would be tough unless you can tig weld.
i like seats tied into the cage, thats what i would do.

 

are you building a cage? you may need to look into d.o.m. or chromemoly. most pipe is designed to carry fluids not support loads.

it wouldnt be cool to find that out the hard way.

 

:iagree:

Hardness of the metal, and structural strength are important.

I.E. you can make something out of a material that is sufficiently hard, but if it is brittle it could be deadly. Similarly, you could make something out of a material that isn't very brittle, but if the tubing is too thin, it won't have the strength you need no matter how hard it is.

Depending on the thickness of the stainless and your welder you can GMAW (mig) weld stainless and get a good joint.

Need stainless wire and CO2 gas. Recommend using a fresh feeder tube, tip, and electrode to minimize contamination from leftover particulates if you've done anything other than stainless with your rig. I recommend the same if you switch from one alloy or metal to another anyway... Of course make sure your stuff is set up with the right polarity for gas and not flux-core...

And if you wanna do it right, go GTAW (tig) instead. The result will be cleaner, better penetration, and easier to work with, in my opinion.

But as always, I'm no expert.

 

Sorry all, But I would only use DOM pipe for my roll cage or structural. Also be careful using grade 8 fasteners where "Shear" is a possibility.... Only use Grade 5 to enable a higher "Shear" preventative fastener. Wanted to throw my 1 cent worth in due to past issues with another project and ramifications that I encountered as the structural Engineer for Mechanical.
These items saved my "behind" and the vehicle occupants as well. Gunner