I am past my electronic problems so I am starting another thread.
My plasma table is going to have a water pan and I am at the point in the build where I need to build the pan. The dimensions are roughly 5 feet by 4 foot 4 and three inches deep. I am looking for suggestions on how thick of metal to use for the pan.
forty gallon of water will be the weight.
Thanks

Approx total weight of pan and water with 10% added = 525#

So I will assume that the plate gauge used will be 16,12, or 10.
Unit load on the plate will be approx 0.17 #/ sq in

Now it becomes a matter of choice of how the pan is supported.
The pan should be considered fully supported ( assume bolted to upper frame via a pan lip, thus  it's fixed all around.
Using no additional pan supports and 10 GA you'll get a pan deflection of .3" but you can add additional supports ie; put one on the center ( an attached hanger support
running across the bottom of the pan and  up the sides  into the upper frame.
You can also add 2 supports across the width evenly spaced over the length at say 22" spacing and use 12 GA @ .025" deflection or 16 GA with  .16" deflection.

So that gives you an idea of plate thickness with out consideration for corrosion. May want to consider adding a support from legs to center of upper frame.

RICH

The outer perimeter angles are 3 x 3 x 3/16" with two 2 x 2 x 3\16" angles running across as shown in picture.

So the pan will sit on top of the frame..............wasn't thinking that when just calc'g to what was needed for support of the  the bottom pan plate.
So it is continuously supported around the bottom  perimeter and the other two supports provide for breaking the long side into 3 places , thus you have the
required  two supports already.
Take your pick, 12 or 16 ga thickness. I am not going to totally engineer the thing.

RICH

I priced a sheet of 5 x 10 sheet of 14 ga and will probably go with that. One place here wanted 318 dollars  and the other place a little further away wanted 103.
I guess I will take the drive.
Thanks for the free engineering.