designs for a better shop crane?

I saw a hinged I-beam on a column at an auction. It was a beam with a trolley on it but one end was hinged and the other was free. Sort of like a swinging gantry crane. I'm probably not describing it clearly enough, essentially it gave you freedom to pick up, move and lower objects anywhere within a semicircle of about ten foot radius. IIRC it was at least one ton capacity, maybe two. It looked like the ideal solution to me if you could set up a strong enough column. A simpler way would be a rolling gantry crane, if you have the room in the shop, or an I-beam that extends the length of the shop and outside to a point where you can unload treasures.

How about something simple like an A frame? If you designed this right, you could rig it to do the lifting, then slip dollies under what ever you needed to move. When not needed, You could fold it up and stow it.

It's called a Jib Crane. --Doozer

I've bookmarked this for a while:

The problem with this type of thing is that any error in design or execution is a potential disaster, assuming you use it at the capacities you're describing.

The problem is one of engineering, so I would be leery of any design that wasn't "engineered" in the strictest sense of carefully calculated and tested, not just guessed at or overbuilt.

Around here, most of the serious motorheads have a shop crane..nothing more than a pair of A legs with a 10' piece of 4" pipe across them. The fancy ones use a pair of stubs welded as sockets below the 4" pipe so you can push it over and break it down. Few do though.

Mine is an H frame made of 3" oilfield pipe, , but with A legs, carrying a piece of 8" I beam 10 foot long. Its 12 ft tall. Socketed so I can break it down if I wanted to. I actually put the I beam up with my Carolina 2 ton engine hoist and a short extention added to the already extended boom.

I needed the height to remove tall machines from my trailer and have overhead room to lift with the 2 ton Yale electric hoist on I beam trolly car.

Some of the guys here make theirs in the A frame style, and then put dollys under them using small boat tires. Move to where you want, jack it up a couple inches, remove the dolly and set it down, repeat on the other side. Half the time, they never remove the tires, just block em so they dont roll.

Gunner

"At the core of liberalism is the spoiled child - miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied, demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and useless. Liberalism is a philosphy of sniveling brats." -- P.J. O'Rourke

I'm obviously not writing clearly. I need to move machines INSIDE my shop, under an 8 foot ceiling. The heavy ones are a Bridgeport mill and a KO Lee surface grinder. I want to clone an engine hoist but with a design modified to be more suitable to my application. For example, it needn't be light weight to move from one site to another easily.

I bookmarked Ron Thompson's A-frame idea years ago. It's pretty simple, which often means it makes a lot of sense. But I want to stick with hydraulics especially since I invested in a nice air over hydraulic 8 ton long throw cylinder so now to use my hoist I just hook up shop air and push a button.

Grant

Gunner wrote:

oooops.

Thats going to be a good trick with an 8' ceiling. I think you would be better off with dollys. Shrug. Ill cogitate on this a bit.

Gunner

"At the core of liberalism is the spoiled child - miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied, demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and useless. Liberalism is a philosphy of sniveling brats." -- P.J. O'Rourke

How about doing the rolling gantry style, but using the adjustable height design and using the hydraulics to telescope both sides of the gantry. That way you don't need to use any of the headroom to accommodate a chain hoist. Just lower the gantry beam to an inch above the item, chain with as many points as needed and then telescope the whole thing up.

The air-hydraulic jacks would sync you on the up stroke, but down would be a bit tricky. Probably work best with two basic cylinders and a separate manual or air-over pump so you have a single lowering valve. You could probably dig a cable/chain leveling mechanism if needed.

Pete C.

I want to build a setup like this - the riggers here use just such an A-frame.

A steel I beam that spans pipe legs. They made up a plate for each end out of U-channel, with 2.5 inch pipe sockets welded on at a slightly compund angle (so the legs splay slightly to the sides) and they use

2 inch pipe as the legs.

Each plate is held to the I beam end with threaded rod, going up to another plain flat steel plate. The whole setup breaks down quite nicely, they run a hoist on a trolley on the beam.

I figured when I make it, I'll try to tie the legs together across the sides to stiffen it, with a bolt-on connection.

Basically I'm waiting for the local voc-tech school welding class to kick in. Wed nites, 6 to 9 every week. I might be close to knowing how to arc weld after a few months!

But the knock-down feature is nice, that way I can store it in the back of the garage as a bunch of linear sticks until needed.

Jim

Come on over some weekend and we can put one together. And the pipe is free.

Gunner

"At the core of liberalism is the spoiled child - miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied, demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and useless. Liberalism is a philosphy of sniveling brats." -- P.J. O'Rourke

:^)

Thank you. I think I might have homeland security upset trying to bring it back as a carry-on though! I do want to learn to arc weld though. Like they say, give a man a fish, you feed him for a day.

Teach him to fish, and he'll spend all his time fishing after that!

Jim

For this application, I think a low slung base with removable casters might be the ticket. Picture your mill set on a stout chanel iron frame. The frame would have feet you could adjust for level, and have a provision for sliding on castors when you needed to move it. a small stout jack would lift the machine an inch or so and the wheels would be installed. When you have the machine moved into position, jack it up and pop off the wheels and adjust the machine to level.

How about a pallet jack?

I would make up a stand similar to the shop crane but with a winch and cable attached. That way the back braces could be taller and the lifting arm would not have to travel as far. Use the winch to adjust the height of the hook and the hydraulics to lift it the few inches needed to move it. Go with the biggest casters you can use. Sort of a one ended adjustable A frame... Hope that makes sense?? :) Glenn