Everything went as planned, with really only one snag. Assembled the crane, rolled it into the garage, lifted the mill out of the shipping crate, put it on the garden cart, rolled the mill over to near the stand, rolled the crane over to it, lifted and put it in place.
The snag was that the mill had four metric bolts of unknown size to mount it to the stand, and one of the holes in the stand wouldn't accept its bolt. I thought it was misalignment - the threads on the bolt were boogered up and I thought it was from cross threading. Lifted the mill again, repositioned everything and it still wouldn't thread. Cleaned up the threads with a triangle file (I don't have metric taps and dies) - still wouldn't work. I pulled a mounting bolt from the shipping crate, verified it was the same, and it wouldn't thread in. Aha! That meant the nut in the stand was the bad part! The closest tap I had was 3/8-16. Its threads would overlay the unknown bolt for almost half an inch. With nothing to lose, I tried it. Gently threaded it in a few turns past the part that wasn't smooth. Voila, the mounting bolt now worked and I have the regulation four mounting bolts holding it down.
Not a bad day's work. I think tomorrow we'll smoke a pork butt and make some pulled pork to celebrate.
Are you going to bolt the stand to the floor? Looks a mite top heavy.
ReplyDeleteThat's the plan. Didn't have any handy, so I'll try to do that tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations, real progress! I like the engine stand idea as well. Making problems bigger than they are, hey my specialty. Glad you got it in, and safely at that.
ReplyDelete73, Jim
If you want the mill stable against tipping over, but you don't want to bolt it to the floor, you could bolt it to a custom pallet. Build the pallet so it doesn't take as much floorspace as a normal pallet, but still accepts the forks of a pallet jack. Cover the top with a solid sheet to prevent the collection of chips. If you use an existing pallet and the machine rocks left and right because there's not enough bracing across the fork pockets, knock custom width cut 2x4's on edge into the pockets as supports.
ReplyDeleteThere exists a pallet jack with a second set of wheels at the fork tips, crosswise to the normal wheels, which allow sideways movement if jacked up as high as it will go. I may have seen it in the Global Industrial catalog.