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Thread: Rigging and Machine Moving. (Machine Roller Gloat)

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    Rigging and Machine Moving. (Machine Roller Gloat)

    This topic has come up a few times already. Moving heavy machines. In some cases, its just moving the machine out of the corner into the chop for use. In that case, invest in an HTC mobile base. You cannot go wrong.

    But what about the heavy stuff. My shaper weighs 4500 pounds. My jointer weighs a nad over 2000 pounds. I have a grinder which weighs 5500 pounds. I move these myself without the use of a forklift and without the use of a tractor. Here is how.

    The use of a pallet jack can make things easy. Look at auctions to pick one up cheap as these are expensive. They are also heavy and bulky.

    My favorate system of moving things is with machine rollers by GKS. I move lots of machines all the time. Picking them from above is always more risky than from below. Many a machine has taken a nose plant because it was incorrectly lifted from above and the machine flipped because the chokers were not correctly placed.

    In many auctions, the use of a rigger is needed when your not able to either "roll the item out" or "carry the item out". Riggers charge insane figures! They are worse than mafia loan sharks. So the GKS system allows you circumvent these shady characters.

    When you were kids, did you play with a red wagon? Remember how the front steering worked? You had two front wheels linked together with a single pivot under the wagon. Steering one of these is very easy and you could always get it into the tightest of places. This is the basis of the GKS system.

    There are many different sizes. The small ones move stuff weighing a couple of thousand pounds. The biggest ones move stuff in the hundreds of thousands of pounds. Mine is setup to move stuff upwards of 30,000 pounds so its a bit awkward on smaller stuff but I use it anyway. It would be nice to have a smaller set for moving small stuff.

    The system is made of three elements. Two rear dollies with a link bar and a steering front dolly with two linked dolly trucks. There is a handle on the front dolly like that of your old red wagon.

    You jack the item up with a toe jack or johnson bar or automotive floor jack or whatever you wish to use. Then you slip the rear dolly into place. Repeat on the other side and slip the other rear dolly into place and then slide the link bar through the two dollys to keep them aligned to each other. Now go the front and repeat this process towards the middle of the machine. Slip in the front dolly and attach the steering handle. With the machine resting, you can now move it like a heavy toy wagon.

    Remember geometry class? Well it takes three points to define a plane. Given four points, any three of these four will define a plane. The fourth point may lie in this plane but most likely it does not. So using four hillman rollers is a bad idea. If your steering with one of the hillman rollers and you hit a section of uneven floor, the steering roller can pop out resulting in the machine taking a face plant. This would be a bad thing. Therefore, you have to work from three points! That is why the GKS system is so much better.

    Here is a link to my shaper gloat. In it you will see a 4500 pound shaper being moved with the heavy duty GKS rollers. I did this all by myself. The red jack in one of the photos is a GKS toe jack. This little guy can lift 11,000 pounds and its adjustable toe can work its way into the smallest of cracks. There is not much that this cannot lift up. It only lifts about 4.5 inches but that is enough to slip the rollers or cribbing underfoot.

    <edit in="" url="" to="" my="" gloat="" here="">http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthre...=Belated+Gloat

    Here is a URL to get to techimpex which is the dealer for GKS in the US. They have both the rollers and the jacks.

    http://www.techimpexusa.com/gksusa/

    I have been doing my own rigging for several years and have learned many tricks from riggers. Rigging can be a dangerous occupation. This is esp. true when moving heavy, top heavy items. So although the rigging illustrated in these photos works for me, it may not work for you. If you are uncomfortable doing this, then you need to hire a rigger. This is only one solution so use it at your own risk.</edit>
    Last edited by Dev Emch; 05-25-2005 at 1:52 PM.
    Had the dog not stopped to go to the bathroom, he would have caught the rabbit.

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