My Gantry Crane Build

[av8or1]

Well I finished up the gantry work today. Whew! A project like this can be physically demanding, even when doing something relatively small such as locking pins. I digress.

Since the suspension components can be fully rotated 180 degrees from parallel to the legs on the inside:


To parallel on the outside of the legs:


They tend to wander a little too much, as I mentioned previously. Thus something needed to be done.

[av8or1]

And that is where locking pins come in. The idea here is to drill one hole in the upper suspension plate and two holes through the top mounting plate. With this design, you would have locking capability at 0 and 90 degrees. 0 degrees meaning that the suspension component was inline with the leg, and 90 degrees being ... well 90 degrees out from that zero position. I considered making a 45 degree option but in the end given my use case scenarios it didn't seem worthwhile. Therefore I opted to remain with the two aforementioned locked positions.

There are a number of ways that you could go about this. I've drilled more holes in this project than I care to remember. I used the mag drill for all of them and I didn't see a reason to stop now. The idea of using a handheld drill and bits just seemed like more pain that I could be bothered with this past weekend.

So I pulled the mag drill out of storage and put it to work on this project, once again:


With one hole in the upper flat plate and two in the upper mount, you can achieve the locking at the 0 and 90 positions, no problem:


After drilling the holes, cleaning everything up, letting it cool a bit and then applying rusty metal primer, I gave the work a test run. Sure enough the gantry moved rather easily and didn't want to stop, even when it rolled onto the grass. I had to pull it to a stop. With that I called this project a success.

Thank you for reading.

[av8or1]

Zoama: I did a little (emphasis on little) research regarding spray MIG. One of the first things I learned about it is that it can only be done in the flat or horizontal position. If you do something other than that I also read that pulsed spray could work. There seemed to be some contention about that latter assertion however. It was not clear to me if pulsed spray MIG in say the vertical or overhead positions would be good practice or what... with that in mind, I dunno. I don't think that spray MIG would have been a good choice for this project. Windy conditions dispersing your shielding gas issues aside, there were so many out-of-position welds involved with this project, some in tight quarters, sometimes both of those, that SMAW (stick welding) was the best option in retrospect. I mean there were some welds that I would not have been able to get a MIG gun into, but a rod was no problem.

And that's something I'd like to conclude with: a project like building a gantry crane will definitely become physically taxing, yes, but it will challenge your welding abilities and push you to improve simultaneously. Out-of-position welding wasn't something that I did much of prior to this build. Now it seems almost routine and I don't miss a beat when I see "yet another" awkwardly positioned weld that with which I must contend. If that type of challenge interests you then I would recommend doing a project like this; be prepared for the battles that you will face. In the end it was worth it, at least for me it was.

Thank you for reading!

[zoama]

Zoama: I did a little (emphasis on little) research regarding spray MIG. One of the first things I learned about it is that it can only be done in the flat or horizontal position. If you do something other than that I also read that pulsed spray could work. There seemed to be some contention about that latter assertion however. It was not clear to me if pulsed spray MIG in say the vertical or overhead positions would be good practice or what... with that in mind, I dunno. I don't think that spray MIG would have been a good choice for this project. Windy conditions dispersing your shielding gas issues aside, there were so many out-of-position welds involved with this project, some in tight quarters, sometimes both of those, that SMAW (stick welding) was the best option in retrospect. I mean there were some welds that I would not have been able to get a MIG gun into, but a rod was no problem.

And that's something I'd like to conclude with: a project like building a gantry crane will definitely become physically taxing, yes, but it will challenge your welding abilities and push you to improve simultaneously. Out-of-position welding wasn't something that I did much of prior to this build. Now it seems almost routine and I don't miss a beat when I see "yet another" awkwardly positioned weld that with which I must contend. If that type of challenge interests you then I would recommend doing a project like this; be prepared for the battles that you will face. In the end it was worth it, at least for me it was.

Thank you for reading!

You are correct that heavy welds need to be horizontal due to the high heat. I do spray 11gauge square tube in any position though. I guess it works well because the welds are short so there's not a lot of heat building.

[av8or1]

You are correct that heavy welds need to be horizontal due to the high heat. I do spray 11gauge square tube in any position though. I guess it works well because the welds are short so there's not a lot of heat building.

Interesting. Well spray MIG is something that I'd like to try someday, for certain. I like the penetration that it appears to yield. That said, if penetration is my primary concern, as it was with the gantry crane build, I'd likely remain with SMAW. Might sound a bit odd, but I like the violent sound that the 6010 gives off when it is doing its thing. 'Just gives me warm-fuzzies about how well it is penetrating. As opposed to the 7018 which sounds more like a soft, warm fire on a winter's night. When beveled that combination is a formula that I'll continue to use in future projects. I still wonder if the folk at Everlast would get a laugh out of the fact that I've used my 275p for MIG welding (short circuit) only once...HAH!