| | I was wondering at first why you weren't just using the | jack's ram directly, but I can see a few advantages to your | design, the most obvious being flexibility in mounting | tooling.
That's the plan. This can do the job of a much smaller press, even an arbor press, as well as something much heavier duty, all with the same tool. I like the versatility and real estate saved in my garage. Being able to change the press tonnage from nothing to incredible easily appeals to me as well. I can use a one ton jack just as well as I can a twenty ton, and they just sit in same place since they're all roughly the same height.
| The first thing I would suggest is to replace the single | tube with gusset that you're using as the column with a | pair of tubes spaced apart under the horizontal sleeve. | This'll make a huge difference in the stiffness and | strength of the column. (I hesitate to call it a column | because columns are normally thought of as carrying | compressive loads, while this member, even though vertical, | is subject to bending loads that more resemble a beam.) To | really stiffen it up you could add a web (or triangulation) | between the two tubes, at which point you've got something | that resembles an I-beam with tubular flanges (or a bar | truss, in the case of triangulation.)
Ah, excellent idea. Would the same be gained by just welding two tubes to each other? The inner tube would be in tension under load, while the outer tube would be in compression. I just had the notion that I could fill the outside, "unused" tube with concrete, which resists compresssion (and buckling the walls of the tube,) but I'll have to cap the ends off, of course. Then again, one or two small I beams or channel between them sounds pretty strong too, with the outer tube full of concrete would be good. Resists twisting really well, too. Whaddya think? Gusseting the horizontal tube would get interesting, of course, but most of that load just passes around it, rather than the whole thing being a cantilever beam. There's a hard to read note about the column "wrapping around" that tube, which passes the load around it nicely.
When I first starting thinking about this, before I was aware of the PM design, I had a much simpler design using an I beam as the column, but I was concerned about it twisting, so was kinda stuck. You've helped me work that out.
| Another thing that occurs to me is the possibility of a | lever that you can actuate manually in place of the jack. | Sometimes the feel of a manual press is preferably to | having lots of force available.
That's one of those details that was so easy to implement, I just noted it in text, and the text pretty much washed out in the scan. With a double tube lever, I'd just weld on a couple pieces of tubes to the side of the top one and slip in a piece of pipe to suit. This way it's just as easy to use the press in manual mode or when necessary, just reach over and start pumping the jack, since the jack isn't attached to the upper lever. There's many times I suspect that the jack's job is over, and the rest of the operation requires less pressure, so all you have to do is just reach up and pull.
| | Ned Simmons
Thanks for sticking with me this far through it! Your input has been invaluable.