FILENAMES: betgantry.jpg DESCRIPTION: This is a picture of a rolling gantry for moving machinery. Posted by Bradley Thomson . The following description was provided: ================================================================= This very successful project started with the decision to sell the house. The upside was collecting a nice profit. The downside including having to move my shop once again and time constraints that forced me to: a. move out before buying a new place, b. store all the stuff during the transition. This would require moving the heavy equipment twice. Once to transfer it to storage and again later to move into the new place. This makes four lifts for each piece of equipment. Real estate here being at a premium, it would have been cost prohibitive to store somewhere with an overhead hoist. My wife had an idea of making a wheeled cart. This had the triple advantage of working well in low overhead spaces, and the largest piece could be left on the cart while in storage to minimize handling. I combined the cart idea with an overhead to make a wheeled gantry. This way we could pick the lathe up, wheel it out to the trailer, transport it, and wheel it into storage. Then, come time to move again: wheel it out of storage, transport it, wheel it into its new digs and, drop it where needed. This was going to be a great labor saver. Only one problem, I still had to get the equipment on and off a trailer. Enter the picture my brother's coffee cart. My brother has a large coffee cart with a custom trailer for moving it. The heavy-duty trailer has an extra low bed, an extra long ramp, channels for the casters and, really cool, a winch. All I had to do is design the new gantry to the coffee cart wheel spacing and, voila', a new, two piece, heavy duty, versatile, equipment moving combo. Now I had the parameters of design: Wheel spacing to match the trailer channels. Height to be less than 8' to clear the garage. Open on one side to straddle the load. 7" casters allow ease of movement. I had 3" I beam which I calculated to be adequate. I added gussets at beam and wheel connections and end plates at beam-ends but these were not really needed. The only necessary detail is chain connections at the open side of the base to prevent spreading. See picture. I could probably have completed the whole thing in four days but sandwiched between boxing and moving the project was finished over three weeks. Moving day I learned a few things. The whole thing moved up and down the ramp easier than I would have hoped. The winch cable needs to be attached as low as possible. Otherwise the torque lifts the rear of the trailer should the front wheels be stuck. Small steps were a problem. Plenty of thin boards and a long bar are useful. I had originally planned to strap the load to the gantry and then the gantry to the trailer but this works poorly as the gantry is not stiff enough to immobilize the load. Instead drop the load on the trailer bed and strap the load straight to the trailer bed. Finally I would have liked casters with locking swivels but the price difference was prohibitive. File list: betgnatry.txt this file betgantry.gif Picture of lathe hoisted onto gantry and ready to role up the trailer.