F
frwillia
Guest
well we call 'em all bobcats out here and some of them will lift a house...and some idiots can tip any one of them over in a parking lot.
rolling on pipes is scarey. A bucket of golf balls and some sheets of plywood will let you move the world too, 360 degrees. I've rolled around quite a bit of this stuff and absolutely WILL NOT do it without a serious confab, powwow, palaver, parlay, sitdown or safety meeting whatever all y'ALL's call it in your neck of the woods. Rule Number One with Heavy Stuff (IMO) There will be ONE guy in charge. For ME, this is gener'ly me, since I'm most often the one paying the fiddler. If I'm not in charge I back down, stay down, squat and grunt when told.
Here are a few of my rules
#1, I'm in charge. YOU WILL NOT MOVE without my sayso....
#2, we will go SLOWER.....
#3, if it falls, YOU WILL SCATTER!!! You WILL NOT try to catch it. If you're catching something I've already FUBAR'd the job. losing limbs doesn't make it better.
#4, if it's hard, we're doing something wrong. "Muscling" thousands of pounds is stupid.
#5, when the heavy thing stops moving when you want it to move, you will STOP and find out why!
etc etc along those lines.
I'm glad you're asking for ideas
al
We pretty much agree 100%. I was running the farm by my self when I was in 8th grade. That required things like mounting the cultivator on the front of the Farmall 400, installing and removing the loader, and so forth. I had to move and position them using blocks, chains, and what ever simple machine I could come up with. The cultivator was the most difficult.
Moving something like a mill is tricky too, because it has no suspension. There would be no warning, if it goes at all, it's gone. You are right - let it go and never be close enough it can get you.
I sold my CNC mill last year, the FTV2 in the trailer picture I posted. I moved it out to the middle of the shop floor, go it up onto it's steel pallet, bolted it down, borrowed my nephew's LS185, loaded it on the trailer, and with my wife driving the other truck to haul the SkidSteer, delivered and positioned it in it's new home shop by my self.
The whole process took me about 5 hours taking my time.
It can be done, the key is knowing how.
Eidted to add: Moving a mill, getting it onto pipes (I moved mine on pieces of 1/2" black pipe machinery rollers cleverly concealed between moves as 1/2" pipe clamps), requires rocking it. I always rock it fore and aft, the direction in which it has the most stability. I use hardwood wedges to limit movement. I use a long prybar to rock it back, I used the portapower under the ram to rock it forward with full control. I take it up in small steps using hardwood blocks created for the task. It can be steered on pipes using the portapower angled under the back of the ram. It's easy to control motion using wedges as preset stops. Let it go a few inches slooooowly, reset the wedges, steer pipes with a deadblow hammer, it's not fast but it works.
The most important tool is the brain. It's directives are executed by careful application of prybars, portapower, comealong, wedges, pipes, and solid blocking.
Always think in terms of stability and how to make gravity your friend.
Fitch
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