Harbor Freight gantry crane

[D60]

I picked this up over the holidays. Sale price of $530 less the 15% coupon put it at $450. I figured even if it wasn't that great you couldn't build one for that, and I can always modify it. A search of the forum did reveal one post about the crane in the "Good Tool List" thread:
http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/showpost.php?p=6284876&postcount=52

It starts life as this:
http://www.supermotors.net/getfile/597636/original/gantry-001.jpg

Open the crate:
http://www.supermotors.net/getfile/597640/fullsize/gantry-005.jpg

It's hard to see but the winch assy for raising/lowering the upper beam is already assembled. All you have to do is bolt the pre-assembled uprights to the I-beam and bolt on the "feet" and casters.

This thing is heavy, I knew there was no way my wife and I could right it on our own. Fortunately the tractor went high enough to suspend it so we could bolt on the "feet."
http://www.supermotors.net/getfile/597641/original/gantry-007.jpg

The overall fit isn't the most impressive:
http://www.supermotors.net/getfile/597647/original/gantry-009.jpg

also the bolts shown above are (allegedly) Gr 4.8, 12mm. And I'm not sure what it is about the Chinese that they think if you use a lock washer that counts as a regular washer, too. I've already replaced these with 1/2" Gr 8 with washers on BOTH sides and a lock washer. The 1/2" dropped right in, I didn't have to enlarge the holes. I think these bolts see the most load as the legs try to splay under load. The other bolts I'm not going to replace.

The casters seem decent, they're 5" solid cast iron, no poly or anything.

I didn't feel the winch system for height adjustment was all that bad, but it is pretty much a two-person deal, one person at each post.

One reason I really liked the idea of this crane was because I've installed a mezzanine down the center of the entire length of my shop. Well, at the moment it's a skeleton of pallet racking but someday I'll floor it, wire it and plumb it. I put the bottom of the mezzanine level at 9' so I can move tall objects under to either side of the shop. With this crane being adjustable from a little over 8' to nearly 13' it keeps my options open. Here it's one step up from the lowest setting and will still roll under the mezzanine (despite the angle of the photo)
http://www.supermotors.net/getfile/597685/fullsize/gantry-010.jpg

Their trolley is sold as a separate item. I installed it but wasn't impressed with how it slopped to either side 1.25" even set up at it's narrowest. I shortened the spacers pointed out here and the fit is much better IMO
http://www.supermotors.net/getfile/597650/fullsize/gantry-011.jpg

I haven't lifted anything significant yet but I think it was worth $450

[PTSchram]

I'm glad you're buying this stuff so I can live vicariously through you :flipoff2:

How the carbide grinder work out for you? I'm probably gonna get mine Saturday or Sunday.

PT

[Nickm]

Thats nice:smokin:
Whats the 1 ton limiting factor? Is it the casters? It seems Like you could hang a small 12 winch some how and use it for lifting. Doesn't tractor supply sell a small one for about $60? That would make a really nice lift for my buggy :smokin:

[fj40charles]

Nice write up. I like the fact you can tear it down in case you have to move it.

[SPEEDCRAVIN]

Very cool... I may have to get one of those for my new shop... I might look into setting something like that across the steel trusses though. I will have to get with the building company and see what the engineer has to say... If I cant do that I will buy what you did.

D60 where did you get those orange and green industrial shelving at. A guy down the road from me has the same thing and he said his brother used to work for walmart and he got his from a warehouse they were taking down... I need some heavy shelving in a bad way!!!

JOSH

[Grimjaw]

D60 where did you get those orange and green industrial shelving at. A guy down the road from me has the same thing and he said his brother used to work for walmart and he got his from a warehouse they were taking down... I need some heavy shelving in a bad way!!!

JOSH


Those are pattet racks. Most warehouse use some thing like them. You should be able to find a dealer the sells used ones cheap.

I have been looking at that gantry. I am thinking the top I-beam is the weight limiting part. Most likely you could replace it with a bigger beam for more load. I seem to remember a old thread in this section on safe load limits on I-beams for a gantry set up.

[RustoleumWhite]

I got one of those maybe a year ago or so. Bought it for "work"... and unfortunately that's I'll its been used for so far.




Heavy as hell, BUT as was mentioned above, it comes apart in to pieces that one person can (barley) man-handle. We've used it to set Switch Gear and MCC's when we have the room, and it works very slick for that and has paid for itself in labor savings as well as safety.

The cat's meow set-up for that would be the HF motorised carriage with their larger over-head electric hoist bolted to it. Full power. But the chain fall and carriage work well. I actually have the electric trolley, but it doesnt come with a hook plate for the chainfall. Its basically designed for the electric hoist. Course the box shows it on there....


I agree with the bolts, toss them all and just replace them with Std hardware, especially the lock washers but over all its not a bad unit and DEFINALY cheaper for similar quality that anything else we were able to find on the market. EXPECIALY since this one is height adjustable (which is allot of the weight).


Check the cable clamps that hold the adjusting cable. Ours were not *quite* tight.


I'd put it on the "good experience" list.

[CJeep77]

I picked one up a year ago and I have been happy with it. I still need to order a new top I-beam for it that is wider so the Dually will fit under it though.:shaking: I am going to step up to a larger size too so I feel better when I overload it.:D

[D60]

Yep, just pallet racking. Check the yellow pages of any major city for used material handling equipment. This stuff sells used for pennies on the dollar. DO shop around, some places are far more proud of it than others. A craigslist search for pallet racking should net several results too. Sometimes scrap yards get it in, too.

I agree the upper I-beam is the limiting factor. And I'd already like to replace it since my trailer is 103" wide at the fenders but the gantry is only 94" per specs, 94.5" per my tape. But at least I could get the crane over the front or rear of the trailer (87"), on either end of the fenders.

[Mechanos]

Keep in mind that lengthing the I-beam top member will decrease it's capacity. You will likely have to go to a larger/heavier I-beam to maintain the same capacity when lengthening it.

[Albin]

Keep in mind that lengthing the I-beam top member will decrease it's capacity. You will likely have to go to a larger/heavier I-beam to maintain the same capacity when lengthening it.

+1.

I have a beam calculator at work, don't recall it's exact name, if I did, you could probably download it and use it.

In any event, put up the current beam size and width and the new beam size and width and I'll let you know the weight you can expect with what deflection. I'll need help interpreting what the correct deflection should be though in this application.

Al

[Rob G]

Beamboy is the one that I use. Free download. Easy to use also.

http://www.download-by.net/business/other/13317,beamboy.html

[Landslide]

My free one that I modified to work with a trolly. I replaced the upper cross beam that was a huge rectangle tube with a large D-ring welded in the center for the hoist with the I-beam. I cut off about five feet from the legs - fawker was really tall.

345301

[D60]

The cat's meow set-up for that would be the HF motorised carriage with their larger over-head electric hoist bolted to it. Full power. But the chain fall and carriage work well. I actually have the electric trolley, but it doesnt come with a hook plate for the chainfall. Its basically designed for the electric hoist. Course the box shows it on there....

So as a follow-up to this........

when I first read the quote above I thought no need for the electric trolley and hoist. It didn't take long to see the benefit of each. The "manual" trolley will roll to either side with a load on it unless the crane is *perfectly* level. Annoying. Hard to say if the crane is at fault, but I'll tell ya the floor in my shop is full of high and low spots. I'd end up using a beam clamp as a brake for the trolley, essentially negating any benefit of a rolling trolley, and eventually just moved the load directly to the beam clamp.

I picked up the HF electric trolley. It seems to do ok, but the square wheels don't engage the tapered lip of the crane I-beam all that well, so it'll do burn-outs quite regularly LOL..........which leads me to the fact that the electric trolley hauls ass. Could really use some more gear reduction IMO.

I recently built a 6' high animal cage, and the gantry was awesome for raising the floor of the cage to waist-level for welding and painting, but tugging on the chain fall repeatedly got old, plus the pull-chain would scrape on the cage and scuff the fresh-ish paint.

I picked up HF's 880lb electric hoist 'cause it was on sale recently. Initial impressions are that it's way nicer than I expected. It seems crisp, clean, and doesn't sound cheeseball under load like I thought it would. Also fast as hell. I like that HF does not lower line speed on their electric hoists as weight capacity goes up (they must have 5 different versions varying from 440 lbs to 1300lbs). They apparently just install a larger motor (according to product specs) and keep line speed the same on all models. Obviously it gets cut in half if you use the supplied snatch block, but that's still plenty fast.

The electric trolley comes w a plate specific to the HF electric hoists, but trying to bolt the two together up on the I-beam is an exercise in frustration. Poor layout of the holes makes it nearly impossible to get two of the bolts started. A bit of grinding woulda helped a lot, but I finally got it w/out having to take it all back down for grinding.

Oh and my trolley did come w a hook plate for a chainfall.

[yager]

Would a cheep hand crank winch with the cable wrapped around the drum a few times and then looped down and back and hooked to the other end of the cable work ?

To explain it differently, the cable looped into a circle, with the winch at one end and a pulley on the other. Then clamped to the hoist part. You crank the hand crank and it pulls the trolly. Some hand winches have a lock in each direction...

While I'm all for motorized junk, just had a thought for a cheaper setup..

[D60]

I dunno Yager but not a bad idea.

I will say that the whole deal causes a mess of cords; you've got two power cords and two remotes. *In all my spare time* I'll eventually somehow hardwire the gantry, running the cords along the I-beam and down the leg(s). Just have to leave enough slack up top so the trolley can travel to either side. Also would be nice to fab a plate which houses both remotes so they're always together and not dangling separately.