Built myself a gantry crane…

[Spitzair]

I recently bought myself a project D2 Caterpillar, but don’t (or rather didn’t) have any real good way of lifting the heavy pieces other than my bobcat. When I first dreamed up my little shop I had intended to integrate some I-beams into the ceiling to have a crane built in but to make it structurally suitable would have been cost prohibitive, plus I wouldn’t be able to use it outside. So I settled for a gantry crane… and here’s what I came up with. A buddy of mine traded me an 8” I-beam for a hydronic boiler that I didn’t need and I picked up some long-stroke bottle jacks, some caster wheels, a beam trolley and a few pieces of steel. I had a chainfall hoist laying around for many years just for this very purpose, and now it all came together.
It lowers down to an overall height of just under 10 feet so it fits through my 10 foot door and raises up 18 inches to take full advantage of my 12 foot ceiling height minus the light fixtures. When all the way up I get just over 8 feet to the hook on the hoist. I do have a 2000lb electric winch floating around here somewhere I might rig up to use with this thing in the future. Anyway, enough of me rabling, here’s the finished product and a link to the video I made of building it…
Oh and for those of you interested I’ve started a video series of the D2 project…
Cheers!

 

[CalG]

I recently bought myself a project D2 Caterpillar, but don’t (or rather didn’t) have any real good way of lifting the heavy pieces other than my bobcat. When I first dreamed up my little shop I had intended to integrate some I-beams into the ceiling to have a crane built in but to make it structurally suitable would have been cost prohibitive, plus I wouldn’t be able to use it outside. So I settled for a gantry crane… and here’s what I came up with. A buddy of mine traded me an 8” I-beam for a hydronic boiler that I didn’t need and I picked up some long-stroke bottle jacks, some caster wheels, a beam trolley and a few pieces of steel. I had a chainfall hoist laying around for many years just for this very purpose, and now it all came together.
It lowers down to an overall height of just under 10 feet so it fits through my 10 foot door and raises up 18 inches to take full advantage of my 12 foot ceiling height minus the light fixtures. When all the way up I get just over 8 feet to the hook on the hoist. I do have a 2000lb electric winch floating around here somewhere I might rig up to use with this thing in the future. Anyway, enough of me rabling, here’s the finished product and a link to the video I made of building it…
Oh and for those of you interested I’ve started a video series of the D2 project…
Cheers!

That is a whole lot of lifting capacity!

Just don't hang a pulley from the cross beam and try to pull something up with the line attached to your truck bumper! ;-)