Hello, all, I need to increase the width of my doorway to acommodate a new machine going into my basement. This isn't typical metalworking gear, but a surface mount pick and place machine. It is about 51 inches the narrow way and 1500 Lbs. My current doorway is 36" wide, and I never ran into this before. I got my 15" Sheldon lathe and Bridgeport through the door easily. The walls are 8" thick, but magnets seem to indicate no rebar in there.
Here's my current plan, please shoot it down now if you see something wrong, before I spend a bundle on stuff that won't work. I have a metal doorframe that is cast into the concrete. I am planning on cutting the frame and then using diamond saws in a circular saw to cut the wall. Using a 7" blade, I can cut
2.5" deep into the wall. If I cut from both sides, that will leave a 3" part in the center that is not cut. After completing the cuts, I could whack it with a sledge hammer or drive a wedge into the slit to break the remaining concrete. (I know I have to run these blades wet, any idea whether I can get away with this on a cheapie wood circular saw? I was figuring a small tube attached to the garden hose spraying a jet on the blade. Maybe I could even use my Loc-Line coolant nozzle parts!)Then, I need to get at least part of a matching doorframe, or an entire vertical part plus ~18" of the top, and weld it to the existing frame. Finally, I need to get a new door, either solid wood or insulated steel.
Other options are to keep the existing door and add a second door and a mullion (is that the right word when it applies to doors?) that can be removed when you need the full opening.
So, any ideas how to do this, as cheaply and quickly (and painlessly) as possible? (Hmmm, water jet sounds like a good idea, but I don't have one.)
Anybody know where to get such doors and frames? Home Depot has all these gorgeous $2700 carved wood doors with oval cut glass windows, but nothing whatsoever in metal -- at least on the web.
Jon