Well, I think this is an SMC first. This is a gloat for me and it’s also a gloat for another SMC member, but this other SMC member wants to stay anonymous. So – we have an anonymous gloat! Seriously though, he’s a full SMC member with a real first and last name, but he wants to stay as a lurker and I will respect his wishes, so I’ll call him OSG (Other SMC Guy). Here’s our little gloat story …
I ended up with a deal on a Delta 16” Radial Arm Saw. The RAS included a free cyclone dust collector, but both the RAS and dust sucker were in New Hampshire and I needed to go up to pick them up. I have a perfectly good dust collector and neither needed the cyclone nor have room for it in my shop. So, I put an ad in the SMC Classifieds that said “almost free monster dust sucker” – I wanted $75 for the cyclone to cover the cost of my going up to NH to get my RAS. Well, Alan Turner was first to respond and said “I want it”. It looked for a little while as if there would be a way for someone to take the sucker down to Alan in Philadelphia, but that didn’t work out. Meanwhile, OSG had contacted me. OSG lives in NH and I figured I could pickup both machines in my pickup and just drop off the sucker to him. After talking with the place that had the machinery, they said “you aren’t gonna fit all this in the back of a pickup”, and I realized that there was also no way to offload the sucker at OSG’s from the back of my pickup. So, I checked around and found, and OSG agreed to cover the rental of, a 16’ beaver tail tilt construction trailer. I would drive up to NH with the trailer, pickup the machinery, drive to OSG’s drop off the sucker and then drive home. The trailer meant that unloading at his place became a matter of wheeling off the sucker with a pallet jack vs. “push the sucker off the back of the bed”.
So – it’s up to NH we go. The machine shop I was picking the machinery up from said that they had pallets for the machines and a forklift to load them onto my truck/trailer.
The basic plan for moving machinery is to bolt it to a pallet, strap the machines down to the trailer and offload with a pallet jack. I prepped for the rigging by cutting some scrap pieces of 1”x3” to screw down across the slats of the pallets. That was to reinforce the connection between the machine and pallet. When I got to NH, they had already bolted the RAS to a pallet for me. Nice guys! Unfortunately, the forks on my “narrow-fork” pallet jack were spaced perfectly so they hit the bolts sticking down, so I had to move 3 of the 4 bolts holding the RAS down. I didn’t bother with the extra wood strips across the pallet because that would have meant getting them to lift the RAS up for and I didn’t want to ask them to do that. We got the RAS loaded onto the trailer. Then the cyclone came out. Fortunately, the bottom of the cycle sat right on the pallet and had a flange with some holes on it that could be bolted down. Then, they said we’ve got to get the chute too. I’m thinking – there was no mention of a cute – what’s this? Well, it turns out to be a stand that the cyclone sits on and the narrow nose of the cyclone sits down in. That was light enough so we loaded it by hand on to the back of the trailer.
Here are a couple of pictures - the machines on the trailer and a shot from across the street so you can put the size of this stuff in perspective.
RAS and DC trailer.JPGRAS and DC with truck.JPG
We drove to OSG’s place. Backing down the driveway was a little fun – that’s a lot of trailer and the driveway had a bend right of the road. We made it down and ended up putting the beaver tail of the trailer right inside the garage door so we could roll right off onto the concrete.
Here’s a pic of the cyclone in the garage.
Cyclone in garage.JPG
The basic diameter of the cyclone is 24” – it’s 5’ tall. The inlet orifice is 12” in diameter. It has a 7.5HP 3-phase motor. I was looking at it (first time closely) to see what the amperage draw was and it said about 7 amps. I’m thinking – that’s awful low until I look at the voltage – 575 volts. So, OSG will need to replace the motor, but some patient Ebay shopping will produce a motor for under $100 including shipping. It’s possible that a smaller motor (like a 5HP) would work as long as he runs smaller ducting – like the 6=7” most of us would want anyway. Can you imagine a 7.5HP sucker with a 12” duct? Don’t put a full-size floor sweep on that thing or you’ll suck in more than wood chips.
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Originally Posted by Jim Becker
Creeker Visits. They're the best. 