My Gantry Crane Build

[av8or1]

So the update. The short version is that work has been dominating my time as of late. However I can't complain about that too much, as it is what funds our existence; and no one would listen anyway, so why waste the oxygen?

I had planned on making some real headway this holiday weekend. However I ended up working a fair amount of it and we received short bits of the wet stuff, on-again-off-again type of scenario. Thus the opportunity windows would be limited in number and duration. That said, I did manage to at least weld on the end plates that Mark suggested, grind their welds (well, the ones I cared to grind anyway; the interiors I just left as-is) down, clean off the surfaces and lay on the rusty metal primer:


And wouldn't ya know it, just as I was starting in on the support plates, I heard rumblings off in the distance. So I loaded all of the gear back into the cart and called it a day. Sure enough, about 20 minutes later we received yet another sprinkling. It didn't amount to much and was done in about 3 minutes or so. However there's no way of knowing the wx's intensity nor duration, so I err on the side of caution and merely avoid it altogether.

Meager progress in comparison to what I had hoped for, but I'll take progress whenever it comes my way:


Hopefully work will return to normal soon and I can finish off the project. TBD.

I did decide to order some bushings for the king pins; found those online. Who knows when they'll arrive, we'll see. Finally, I found the outer welds on the lower side of each end cap to be challenging; especially since it's been a few months since I've laid down any beads. The reason was they were out-of-position and involved a weird rod angle. It was difficult at first for me to put down anything with decent consistency. There would be some relief found by elevating the gantry with a floor jack. However I didn't attempt that initially and found the going a bit rough with the gantry resting on its casters. Admittedly, I elevated only the one side; I found that by the time I had ran a few beads on that side, I was able to lay down some respectable stuff on the other without the need to raise that side of the crane. So in short, I was able to shake off the rust (no pun intended) and once that was done I was laying beads as per normal. Settings were a bit lower though, as the plates were only 1/4" and I used some 3/32" 7018 that I had laying around. I stuck with 1/8" for the 6010 though and the identical settings from back in the day.

I digress. Hope everyone had a good 4th!