Contemplating purchase of a pallet jack to move my Monarch 10EE around the my garage once the truckers figure out how to unload it from their truck (their lift gate capacity not adequate inspite of me telling them to consider the weight of the lathe before accepting the transport deal, now they are stuck). I would rather buy a used one if someone has one since it will be rarely used. Or I could weld a mover such as this as discussed in the forum sometime back but the info is inadequate:
I made a pair of hydraulic lifters that can lift up to 8,000 lbs and can roll the mill anywhere you want on a flat floor. They only cost as much as some steel tubing, 4 solid steel 5 inch casters and 2 hydraulic bottle jacks in the 6 ton range. I planned on writing them up for the webmetal news with pictures. I needed them to extract a mill and lathe from under a house in Oakland CA. They took about 4 hours to make and worked like a charm. I don't know if anybody ever made these for sale, but back when I was an apprentice machinist at Purdue University's central machine shop, the bull gang used something similar to move half the machine tools over one weekend. I tried to remeber what they looked like 15 years ago and came up with a really neat moving tool. Basicly they consist of a steel frame about 2'x3' with an angle iron foot on the 2' side. The frame slides up and down on another frame with 2 solid steel swivel casters, and a 6 tone bottle jack. The angle iron is slid under the edge of the machine, and when the bottle jack is pumped it lifts the frame off the ground. One of these lifters is placed on each end of the machine tool. A webbing ratchet strap is used to strap them together. Once you pump each end up an inch or so the machine just rolls around as easy as can be. It is important that the frames remain vertical or it will roll rather odd. I used them to roll 2 machines of about 1 ton each out from under a house, across a back yard, up a driveway and onto the lift gate of a flat bed truck. I'll try to get the article together for the web page. Hopefully sometime next month.
-- Best of luck
********************************************************************* Ernie Leimkuhler STAGESMITH PRODUCTIONS Custom Metal Fabrication ABANA AWS SCA IATSE Local 15/488 Renton, Washington, USAAny ideas about or similar to this? A simple and easy design would be great! How about some input on ways to move my machine around the shop?
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