How to Choose a Welding Cart: Size, Load, Cylinders

What a welding cart is

A welding cart is more than a shelf on wheels. It holds the welder at a height where you can change the settings comfortably, keeps the cylinder upright so it cannot fall over, and lets you roll the whole set-up to wherever you are welding. In a garage or small workshop it is often the only permanent home for the welder, the cables, the torch and all the small parts.

A cart also deals with safety. Gas suppliers’ safety data sheets say a cylinder should be stored upright, valve at the top, and secured against falling over; they also say cylinders should not be dragged or rolled, and recommend a trolley designed for cylinders for moving them, even over short distances. Workplace rules differ from country to country, so ask your gas supplier which apply to you. A portable welding cart with a proper cylinder holder covers both points. More on moving, storing and transporting cylinders is in our guide on welding gas cylinder safety.

Which welder: MIG, TIG or MMA

The first question is whether your welding process needs a cylinder at all.

• MIG/MAG – wire fed through the torch and shielding gas from a cylinder. For steel, usually an argon and CO2 mix or pure CO2; for aluminium, pure argon. A MIG welder cart has to take the welder with its wire feeder and the cylinder.
• TIG – a non-consumable tungsten electrode and pure argon from a cylinder. The welder is often a small inverter, but a TIG welding cart needs the cylinder just as much as a MIG one.
• MMA (stick) – the electrode coating produces a gas shield as it melts, so no cylinder is needed. The cart then mainly carries the welder, the leads and the electrodes.
• MIG with self-shielded flux-cored wire – also no cylinder. If you plan to move to solid wire with gas, though, choose a cart with room for a cylinder from the start.

Which gas goes with which process is a topic of its own; the short version is above, and the details are in our guide on shielding gas for MIG and TIG.

The second point is the weight and footprint of the welder. Look up its weight and the size of its base in the data sheet, then compare them with the rated load and the size of the cart’s shelf. The welder should not overhang the shelf or sit on its edge, and the cables and torch need somewhere to hang so they do not trail across the floor.

Size and load: sizes S, L and XL

Carts differ mainly in how many cylinders they take and how large, because the cylinder sets the height, width and weight of the whole thing. This is how it works in our range:

Size S is designed for a typical TIG/MMA inverter or a compact MIG welder and one cylinder. If you already have a 50 l cylinder, or you weld with two gases, for example MAG with a mix and TIG with argon, size S will not suit you. Those cases will be covered by sizes L and XL, which are coming soon.

How many cylinders, and what size

The cylinder is the heaviest and tallest item on the cart. The size marked on a cylinder is its water capacity in litres; how much gas is inside depends on the filling pressure and the type of gas. As a guide:

An empty 10 l cylinder weighs about 18 kg (40 lb), while a full 50 l cylinder weighs 68 to 84 kg (150 to 185 lb) and stands about 1.7 m (5 ft 6 in) tall. A 20 l cylinder is a sensible compromise for a home workshop: it lasts several hours of arc-on time, and on a cart you can roll it around with no effort. A bigger cylinder means fewer swaps, but also a bigger and heavier cart.

Welding cart wheels and stability

A cart with a cylinder on board weighs several tens of kilograms, and its centre of gravity sits fairly high. That is why three things matter:

• the wheel layout – larger wheels under the cylinder roll over thresholds and cables more easily, and swivel castors at the other end let you manoeuvre in a tight space,
• brakes – on the swivel castors, so the cart does not roll away while you weld,
• a low, secure cylinder holder – the cylinder stands on the base of the cart and is fastened to its frame, not to a thin panel.

Remember that an empty cart behaves differently from a loaded one. On size S the back is light without a cylinder: fit the cylinder first and then the welder, pull the empty cart smoothly and do not pull the drawers out on a slope. We calculated the tipping angle on the CAD model with a 20 l cylinder and a 30 kg welder: about 16°. This is a design calculation, not a test of the finished cart – the stability of your cart depends on how it is assembled.

Drawers, shelves and a tool wall

A cart ends up carrying far more than the welder: wire, electrodes, contact tips, nozzles, pliers, a wire brush, gloves. A welding cart with drawers and a tool wall means those small items travel with the station instead of lying on the bench.

Size S has three drawers made of 1 mm DC01 sheet. Instead of the solid side panels you can choose a system tool wall with a 38 × 50 mm hole grid for M5 mushroom-head fasteners; accessories for the M5 system wall are in development. Sizes L and XL will use the same grid, so the wall will not go to waste if you ever move up to a bigger cart.

Buy a ready-made cart or build one from a kit

A ready-made cart is in use as soon as you unpack it. A weld-it-yourself kit is a set of laser-cut parts that you fit together with tab-and-slot joints and weld yourself. For size S that means 95 flat and 9 bent parts in S235JR steel, 2 to 5 mm thick, and the build takes two sessions, 6–8 hours in total.

Whichever you choose, check a few things before you buy:

• the rated load of the shelf in kilograms and its size, compared with the weight and base of your welder,
• the cylinder diameter the holder is designed for, compared with your cylinder,
• room for coiled cables, the torch and the earth lead,
• brakes on the castors, and how the cart behaves without a cylinder.

A kit makes sense if you can weld, want a cart made of 2–5 mm steel sized for one cylinder, and would like to practise on a real project along the way. If you are wondering whether to design a cart from scratch instead, weigh up how long drawing, cutting and squaring the parts would take you against a kit where the parts already fit; our guide DIY welding cart: plans vs laser-cut kit compares the two. The full specification and what comes in the box are on the welding cart S page.