This post got tangled up with my 12 ton press article so here it is all by itself.
A while back we were moving the T coupe body from off the frame to on the body bench. We were using my cherry picker engine hoist to lift the body and move it. I had to stick the boom in the window to lift the body.
It looked like a diaster waiting to happen. And when we were about to lower the body the weight shift made the rear land first and that in turn made the cherry picker tilt badly. I was over the bench so I slowly let it down trying to keep the lift from falling over. about a foot away the cherry picker made a not so graceful lurch on it's side dropping the body the last foot. Fortunately No damage was done and no one was injured.
So I decided I needed a gantry crane. After looking at all kinds of cranes and and checking everything everywhere I could not find one that would work in my shop. I don't have a lot of room and I am limited by an 8ft ceiling. I realized if I bought a commercial crane it is huge. it's too wide and to tall and two damn expensive.
I did a lot of research on the cranes and the designs and decided to make a scaled down version of one a university back east made. I decided to use wood for the frame and I picked up a I beam Trolly and a 2 1/2 ton chain fall. All I needed to do was build the frame. Back to the books again and after calculating a lot of wood stresses I had the plan, 400 lb casters, 5 foot long 4X6 on edge for the feet and 4X4's for the verticle. I found some Kool post bases that a 4X4 slips in and it has 4 1/2" holes around the outside perimeter of each post. The post brackets were made out of ~12Ga steel. I use one on the bottom of the 4X4 and bolt it to the 4X6 with thru bolts and the other end of the 4X4 gets one that is bolted to the I beam. So far so good. I have finished the legs and am drilling 10 holes in the I beam but that is not a real fast program.
Just a last note My intent is to use this crane to move the body from frame to bench and vise versa. I have calculated the loads to easily handle 1500 Lbs for this, and my intention is to be lifting 500 Lbs max with it. It is small enough to be usable in my small shop I should finish it up by the weekend. Got my fingers crossed.
A while back we were moving the T coupe body from off the frame to on the body bench. We were using my cherry picker engine hoist to lift the body and move it. I had to stick the boom in the window to lift the body.
It looked like a diaster waiting to happen. And when we were about to lower the body the weight shift made the rear land first and that in turn made the cherry picker tilt badly. I was over the bench so I slowly let it down trying to keep the lift from falling over. about a foot away the cherry picker made a not so graceful lurch on it's side dropping the body the last foot. Fortunately No damage was done and no one was injured.
So I decided I needed a gantry crane. After looking at all kinds of cranes and and checking everything everywhere I could not find one that would work in my shop. I don't have a lot of room and I am limited by an 8ft ceiling. I realized if I bought a commercial crane it is huge. it's too wide and to tall and two damn expensive.
I did a lot of research on the cranes and the designs and decided to make a scaled down version of one a university back east made. I decided to use wood for the frame and I picked up a I beam Trolly and a 2 1/2 ton chain fall. All I needed to do was build the frame. Back to the books again and after calculating a lot of wood stresses I had the plan, 400 lb casters, 5 foot long 4X6 on edge for the feet and 4X4's for the verticle. I found some Kool post bases that a 4X4 slips in and it has 4 1/2" holes around the outside perimeter of each post. The post brackets were made out of ~12Ga steel. I use one on the bottom of the 4X4 and bolt it to the 4X6 with thru bolts and the other end of the 4X4 gets one that is bolted to the I beam. So far so good. I have finished the legs and am drilling 10 holes in the I beam but that is not a real fast program.
Just a last note My intent is to use this crane to move the body from frame to bench and vise versa. I have calculated the loads to easily handle 1500 Lbs for this, and my intention is to be lifting 500 Lbs max with it. It is small enough to be usable in my small shop I should finish it up by the weekend. Got my fingers crossed.