I was at my local community centre before Easter. They have a number of table tennis tables which get pulled out regularly (almost daily) for people to play table tennis. With all of the use, and sometimes heavy hands, the tables are quite worn and have a few faults. One in particular had a broken support leg, which made it unusable. I had a quick look at it and thought that all it would need is a few brackets to fix the rolling support leg, and it could be as good as new.
I had a look at what Bunnings had to offer and spoke to the community centre about it and offered to fix it for the cost of the parts, which I estimated to be about $30-40. Then it was a matter of getting the parts, then on Thursday last week, I was able to get the leg removed to bring home where I can do the repairs.
Here is the support leg removed from the table and separated into its various parts, mainly removing the wheels. The top section was welded but this is what had broken.
A T shaped mending plate was the right size, two of these, one on each side, then a couple of right angle brackets for support. The metal is quite thin on the leg, only 1mm, so I had some 40mm square hollow steel section in my garage, so cut off about 30cm of it. This reinforcing tube which is 2mm thick would fit inside the horizontal leg, but because it is a bit smaller than the inside, would need some spacers to raise it to the top of the leg.
Then additional spacers for the side, since I wanted to get it more or less in the middle of the hollow leg.
Here I have fastened the reinforcing tube with four Tek screws. Due to the thickness of the tube, I decided to pre-drill 4mm holes where I would install the Tek screws for the right angle brackets.
I decided that I should clamp it all together and mark out the holes for the mending plate for both sides. The drilling could then be done easily on my milling machine than with a hand-held drill.
It was a matter of fastening a lot more Tek screws, and I ended with a leg that is much stronger than the original – maybe a bit of overkill, but not bad for less than $40 in parts. I need to wait until after Anzac Day for the community centre to open before I can install the leg and fasten a couple more screws, and also replace a number of nuts and various bits that were also missing.
If I didn’t help them with this, they would probably have to spend many hundreds of dollars on a new table which is probably not as good as the repaired table. They have some more tables for me to look at too!
R.IT 