DIY machine jack

I see what you mean. But if the toe does not protrude beyond the feet, it won't go into the notch ...

Using the following procedure improves the situation somewhat:

- First lift the machine enough so that the jack feet will fit underneath it and then put wooden blocks under the machine.

- Second, release the jack and push the jack forward so that both feet are under the machine. Then continue to lift the machine.

This procedure would also eliminate the friction between the rails of the jack and the machine edge after the feet are under the machine. But before that, there will still be friction.

Currently, the top of the jack leans to the edge of the machine during the lifting and the two feet at the front of the jack press down to the ground. Can you please elaborate on how the jack would tip into the load?

:) Yes, that is indeed an issue... It damages the paint at the side of the machine. I will try placing a small piece of MDF or plywood between the leg that has the toe welded on it and the machine edge and see if that eliminates this damage.

In my initial implementation, there was just a 24 mm hole at the top. I was going to unscrew the jack extension rod and let it go through this hole. But I found out that this rod cannot be unscrewed completely. So I just made the hole a slot.. But the slot width is very close to the thread diameter of the extension rod and the rod is going into the slot as far as possible and then it is tightened by hand.

In this photo, notice that only the front edge of the base plate is on the ground. It would not take much (someone leaning on the machine, whatever) to get the line of force that's going through that corner to move even closer to the machine. At that point, the only thing keeping the jack under the machine is the friction on that itty bitty lifting toe to resist maybe a ton acting off center. Feel lucky? Luck is about all you have going for you at that point, and is a very bad way to routinely deal with heavy, expensive, and precise machines.

It looks like this machine was flat across at the point where you were lifting, and the existingf feet left a huge gap for you to place the jack under. A 1" wide foot on either side of your toe of the same thickness would not have mattered, and would have taken luck and friction out of the risk equation. With the feet, I bet that the bottom plate would have been flat on the ground all the way to the back.

If you do have a situation where you have enough room for only you lifting toe, then perhaps the correct solution is to use a prybar at that location to create a gap adjacent to it large enough for the lifting toe AND proper stabilizing feet.

I'm glad it worked and you got done everything you needed to do without injury, but just looking at that gadget makes my fingers and toes hurt. --Glenn Lyford

Please see Glenn's third paragraph and closing remark.

I discovered this thing called a 'Slate Bar'.

They cost about U$30 at the local Home Depot and are worth every penny.

What keeps the jack from tipping?

This is *really* risky, Timur. What would happen if there were almost no friction in the system? Your jack would slip out from under the load and rocket towards something valuable and mushy, like your body or worse, someone else's.

Add feet, please. They will keep you safer.

Doesn't sound plausible to me. The jack would just tip into the load.

--Winston

Quoting you: "Currently, the top of the jack leans to the edge of the machine during the lifting (...)"

Only friction is preventing a mishap. You are pushing up on the bottom of a heavy machine without having an adequate place to put the opposing force.

This is not safe. Add Feet.

Add Feet First! How much force would it take to rub cured paint off of a machine using a flat surface like that? That is the same force that is trying to rip the jack out from under your load!

Add Feet!

I would use a much larger bearing area to prevent distortion.

--Winston

Got it. Good work! (Excepting the welds, that is . OK, some of them are nice & mine are not much better.)

Others have spoken about needing protruding feet & I agree. Like this:

you say that there's a notch in the machine base only big enough for the tongue. That's a tough one. And I have to acknowledge that you posted your design and we all had our chance to comment on the lack of feet: The worst case would be if one end was on wheels or roller & you lifted the other end. The wheels/roller would allow the tilt to push the machine away & off the tongue. But if the lifter can lean against the machine & the machine not move, you should be OK, kinda'.

How did you cut out the pieces? Nice, clean cuts.

About your pictures: "big" allows one to see all the detail, but I think they're bigger than what's useful. Even with broadband internet I got impatient waiting for the download. Also, kinda dark (or maybe that's my monitor). Anyhow, here's one that I tweaked, much smaller (106kB vs.

2.4MB) & lighter: Bob

After reading your explanation about the safety aspects involved, my fingers and toes started to hurt as well :)

When Winston talked about the need to have feet, I wasn't clear what he meant. But now I understand it... I will weld pieces to the left and right side of the toe.

Because of the existing rubber pads, I won't have a problem on the lathe. But the milling machine is next and it also has a flat cast iron base and just two openings for the forklift rods to go in. I hope the new jack with the feet will be narrow enough so that it fits in to the forklift opening...

But in any case, I have to exercise utmost care when working with this jack. I will never, ever, put any finger under the machine or the feet :O

After reading your explanation about the safety aspects involved, my fingers and toes started to hurt as well :)

When Winston talked about the need to have feet, I wasn't clear what he meant. But now I understand it... I will weld pieces to the left and right side of the toe.

Because of the existing rubber pads, I won't have a problem on the lathe. But the milling machine is next and it also has a flat cast iron base and just two openings for the forklift rods to go in. I hope the new jack with the feet will be narrow enough so that it fits in to the forklift opening...

But in any case, I have to exercise utmost care when working with this jack. I will never, ever, put any finger under the machine or the feet :O

Luckily both the lathe and the mill have flat cast iron bases. When the machines were first brought in, the workers used my pry bar to lift one corner of the machines and the other end of the machine didn't slide. I still have the same pry bar, but I can't lift the machines alone. I will try extending the length of the pry bar using 2" steel pipe.

I have a nice Jet bandsaw that can cut pieces as much as 305 mm wide. It's the first equipment I bough for my home shop and it works great. Here is the link:

Timur - everyone

Bob is definitely right about pricture size. And there isn't the resolution there to justify 2.4MB - I looked on a couple of pictures. And even I on broadband don't want to wait for the images to load.

Scale digital-camera pix to about 800x600 - that will be around 60kB to 100kB.

In unix-world (including Mac OS-X), we use "convert", which batch-converts files.

Something like nameroot=\*; it=JPG; ox=_s.jpg; sizeinstr=640x480; for file in ${nameroot}.${it}; do fstub=${file%.${it}}; echo $fstub $file; convert -size $sizeinstr $file -resize $sizeinstr ${fstub}${ox}; done [so in a directory of images, every image of type ABC123.JPG becomes accompanied by image ABC123_s.jpg] !!!

Then there's graphic editing programs like "Gimp" which are used in both unix world and windows world.

We love to see project pictures.

Richard Smith

Does one of these pics show the whole device? It takes me over a minute to download each pic on my cable internet connection.

Except you say that there's a notch in the machine base only big

That's the pic I needed.

I disagree.

I have High def screens - That High resolution movies are shown as 1080 res. My camera shoots and I use 3MB JPG files 3456 x 2592 as an example. Your lower resolution monitors don't use them but printing and viewing on quality monitors can view them. It depends on the resolution that is needed. To read or view fine detail you need it. For sand from a 1000 feet you don't. And for broadband to take time - there is another issue.

Do you have enough cache memory ? or real memory or disk space and Bandwidth is it limited greatly by your virus trap it before I display it program ?

It loads instantly or nearly so. I mean it is just there! I'm sharing the bandwidth with a heavy duty gamer. Wish I had fiber to the house, but wire is all I have.

Mart> Bob Engelhardt writes:

${nameroot}.${it}; do fstub=${file%.${it}}; echo $fstub $file; convert -size $sizeinstr $file -resize $sizeinstr ${fstub}${ox}; done

Richard, my intention was to show the welds in the highest possible detail so that I can get feedback about what's wrong with them. But I guess I have overdone it a little :)

I am a Linux user myself (Gentoo Linux) and I do use the convert program to resize pictures.

Timur

Glenn, Winston,

Thank you for pounding the need to have feet into my thick scull :)

I have welded the two feet to the jack today and I have successfully corrected the rubber feet of my lathe using my shiny new machine jack (at least it looks shiny to me...)

And as a bonus, the welds ended up excellent and the penetration was good. They almost didn't need any grinding, but I did grind anyway for visual reasons.

The lathe work using the jack was a breeze. But of course I didn't trust the jack that much and I placed wooden blocks underneath the lathe base so that if the jack suddenly fails, the wooden blocks would catch the lathe.

But unfortunately, the jack with the feet does not fit into the opening of the milling machine base. So I will use my pry bar with an extension pipe to rise it enough so that the jack feet will fit under.

I believe in feet. You will now see a lot less paint transfer because the load will tend to pivot a tiny bit *away* from the jack rather than the jack pivoting *toward* the load. Good on ya. This is way safer.

(...)

I placed wooden blocks underneath the lathe base

That's always a good idea. I assume you are using the flat end of the pry bar on the load to prevent the bar from twisting in the extension pipe?

Another possibility is to grab a 2 x 4 stud. You can push down with the pry bar and slide the stud under the load quickly safely and cheaply.

Be extremely careful with vertical mills. If you look up 'top heavy' in the dictionary, you will see a picture of a vertical mill. They fall over very easily.

--Winston

Awesome. I also use ImageMagick a lot.

i

Best wishes Timur - I enjoy reading of your endeavours! Anyone who works hard on projects brings something interesting to see.

Pictures - computer talk. In a graphic program like Gimp you could display 1:1 on your screen and crop out just the area showing the weld

- say crop an area 640x480 and save it with a name like mypic_c.jpg (c for cropped!). I'm no photographic expert, but if you want to show someone close detail, especially when using flash to illuminate, raise the pixel size of your camera image capture (eg. 5Megapixel image) and photo from a longer distance away, so get smoother lighting and full depth-of-focus over the range of what you are interested in - then crop out the detailed bit you actually want and discard the original image. And there's no rule to say you can't crop out two or more areas of interest from one original camera picture and present them as three different pictures, each of a manageable size - like 640x480 or even 800x600 if the detail justifies that.

You may have seen - I like to keep web-page diaries of my projects - images and text. I like my diaries for my benefit, and other people can see and understand what I am trying to do and give me suggestions for how it could be better.

Richard S.

That did the trick! Nice machines, by the way. so clean! I'm jealous.

what did you use to weld it up? what kind of heat?

-mark