How to move it mystery....

Spectrometer as here- www.speciation.net/Appl/Techniques/...ST:_K:_PA:88&BACK=/Appl/Techniques/index.html

Dimen aprox 28" deep x 56" long and 550 lbs ! The thing is in a lab sitting on a heavy built chemistry type cabinet table and has to go thru a normal width door opening and then turn down a narrow hallway and out the main door to the parking lot. To add to the fun, there is a 6 inch or so dropoff from the building floor to the parking lot.

So, a forklift can't even think about getting in there, neither can a shop crane. And it's too heavy for four guys to lift and walk with and get thru the door opening. Only thing I can figure is a rolling scissor lift table like below, but while that one is 1,000 lb capacity the platform is only 20 x 32. I suppose if one altered the handle so that it would fold down some and the machine was centered on the platform it might work but still would be a bit squirlly. Be difficult to drag 550 lbs from lab bench unto the scissor table too.

Sure would be interesting to know how they got the damn thing in there in the first place !

Any ideas ?

Maybe make a top to fit on the above scissor lift?
Dolly?

Although a shop crane won't be able to roll through the doorway with the legs folded out, you can still use it to get the machine off of the lab table and onto a pair of furniture dollies.

I was thinking 3/4" plywood reinforced (strengthened) underneath with 2x4s on edge, blocked so it can't slip off the steel top on the lift-cart.

Wondering if you couldn't use help to lift one corner at a time (not sure if it has feet?) and install those furniture "glider cups" that you see on infomercials or the like. Then perhaps carpet on the plywood would be most appropriate.

If you did pursue that, the cart is going to need some counterweight or some more helpers to hold down the handle-end as it is loaded, but should travel without tipping if the heavy end is toward the handle.

Relative to the dropoff to the curb, I'd simply back up your pickup so the tailgate and all hangs enough over a sidewalk to load it right there in reverse fashion...I think I'd attempt that load over the tailgate without being worried.

Not sure if you have spray-in bedliner, but another long piece of carpet and the glider-cups should take care of that. A plastic ribbed bedliner might be slippery enough to do without the carpet.

Last time we moved something similar in size/weight, (similar application too, something for the radiology department in zeeland hospital) which also had to be on a bench, was to pull up to a window, slide the unit through the window onto a table inside, then roll the table to the bench and slide it over on pads and slip the pads out afterwards to avoid marring the bench, and make it easier to slide. No lifting involved other than to get the pads out.

Your lift table sounds workable, just make sure it's able to handle the weight. I'd prefer a longer wheelbase because of the drop, but that's just me.

ken

I was thinking...

about latching 2 carts side by side, provided of course the casters can turn 360, and have ability to lock one end 90 degree from default direction.

Here are a few thoughts, hope they help:

1. I would expect a piece of lab equipment this heavy (250 kg) to break down into sections unless there was a mechanical reason not to; benchtop polymer extruders come to mind. Are you sure you can't take it to smaller pieces relatively easily?

2. If you have floor access underneath the table the spectrometer is sitting on, then perhaps you could bring an engine crane into the room? Engine cranes are usually designed to come apart easily, so you wouldn't have to bring the crane down the hall intact. Once you've got the crane reassembled in the room, a pair of slings looped under the spectrometer as cradles should get it off the table. Set it down on a pair of ordinary furniture dollies (1000 lb each is normal). When you get to the 6" drop, you'll be glad you've got the load down low on dollies. If a forklift can grab it from outside the door, you're good to go. Otherwise, you're either going to have to ease it down a 6" tall wooden plank ramp you build, or get a 3rd dolly on the ground and overshoot the curb and tip it.

I hope this helps. It's hard to solve someone else's rigging problems because the problem is always so specific to the exact environment and equipment. Kind of easy to sit back in my chair and say "just do this..." :-)

Dave

Airborne said:

Although a shop crane won't be able to roll through the doorway with the legs folded out, you can still use it to get the machine off of the lab table and onto a pair of furniture dollies.

Click to expand...

Hey Airborne, great minds think alike, eh? Didn't mean to steal your thunder, when I started typing there were no replies at all. What's up, don't ANY of us sleep at night?

Dave,
who's off for a well-deserved snooze.

The cheesy HF style Folding shop cranes have wheels for moving while folded.

Roll crane into room and unfold, make spreaders if needed. Might have to jack/block up stand/table to get legs under.. Lift and place on standard rolling cart that will fit through doors, Wheels or casters that are closer together at crane end will allow for better load on cart. Refold crane.

Unfold crane out at step. Make a couple step height blocks to roll load side of crane wheels on, Pick off cart, roll cart around under step and place unit on cart again or truck maybe directly if you can back far enough...

http://www.mini-lathe.com/Mini_mill/Reviews/Shop_crane/crane.htm

Will it be able to turn the corner into the narrow hall way if its sitting upright?
Sounds like there's a possibility that it may need to leave sitting on end? If it can be turned so without damage?

I don't know what kind of manpower you have available, but you did mention that 4 guys couldn't make it thru the door, so I'll assume there's some help available.

Is the room arranged such that 4 guys could get it to the floor? At which point one guy (with help) could tip it on end onto a dolly. Then roll it out to curb. At that point either build a wood ramp, or call the guys again....

500 plus pounds is alot for 4 guys to move and walk with (particularly thru doorways), but it's really not to bad to just pick up and set down. Of course it does depend on the size and strength of who's helping...

Just a thought.

ciao

lino

D., just take some old blankets and lay them in the floor in front of it( or wrap it with bubble wrap plastic). Take a rope and wrap it around it and tie off. Run the rope out to your truck and tie to the bumper. Fire that monster up and haul it out of there. Simple.

You just need to get a hold of the right 2 guys Don. When I was a kid I used to work at a small grocery store. Seemed like every time we turned around we used to have to move a meat case or a freezer in or out of the store. I was in charge of going out to the streets of downtown Ripley Ohio and finding..."Big John" !! This guy could handle the compressor end of a meatcase all by himself !! It would be him on one end and 2 or 3 "normal" people on the other...lol. Usually all he wanted was an ice cream and a pack of smokes for his effort. Dosn't get much more reasonable than that !!

I guess in reality though the ideas above are more, shall we say, sane ?? Good luck with the move. Randy

If you can get it gently to the floor with four or six guys then I would set it onto
two identical dollies, each one with 3/4 plywood platforms sized to pick up the
mounting legs under the instrument. I would then use moving blankets and
ratchet straps to secure each dolly to the instrument, being sure that the
straps do not tension across delicate portions of the chassis.

Alternatively I would make a custom moving skate that is as long as the
instrument and as wide as well. Strap spectrophotometer to the skate top
again. Enough caster wheels underneath to supply good support.

Where I work we have what amounts to a folding engine crane - actually
an old JEOL microscope column change hoise. But it's good for 330 Kg at
least and has legs and outriggers that fold up so it can go into impossibly
small spots and still do the job. Trouble with that spectrophotometer is there
is probably no good pick point so if you just put a single sling around it it will
teeter-totter and fall out of the sling. So the 'several strong young bucks'
approach is probably better.

If you cannot negotiate the turn from the lab into the hallway then you have
the plan wrong. Check to see if the facility can remove a wall panel for you to
allow the turn. At many lab facilities the walls are re-configurable - simply
steel panels that can be undone from the walls and floors and temporarilly set
aside.

I would handle the six inch dropoff with a plywood ramp, made up in advance
with suitable wedge-shaped blocks under it to give enough support, with the end
tapered down a bit. Most laser power supplies come in crates where one side
is the ramp, so when it's folded down the heavy supply can simply be wheeled
down.

I've moved some pretty heavy, delicate items in the past using the 'multiple identical
dollies' approach. Only once or twice have I had to resort to the 'giant skateboard.'

Jim

Shoulder Dolly Maybe?

I don't have any personal experience with these but from reliable sources, they work exceptionally well. Maybe, maybe not in this application. Apparently, the ergonomic load distribution permits a team of people to easily lift and move difficult objects without a dolly. Check out the video on the first website. The northern one says up to 600# for 2 guys.

If needed, a couple of 2x4's on edge and some plywood to distribute the lifting points continously along the bottom (a limited platform if you will) and four guys to lift, or possibly two strong ones, it may be possible. I am thinking that with four guys, two would be at each end and not one on each of the four sides. Two guys shoulder to shoulder could get through a doorway then. The load would be very light and 8 hands free to stabilize.

As noted, no experience myself ...yet. Just a possibility.

http://www.shoulderdolly.com/

http://www.northerntool.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_6970_200310414_200310414

Mekanizm

I don't know if any of this will work but last month I had to move a VERY fragile, high value object that weighed about 600 - 700 pounds...... this had to go down 2 steps, out a door, across and uneven curved flagstone walk that went down a grade, then through a garden and up a step and through a 34" wide passage and up into a truck. Not Fun and no room to screw up! Good news is resources were anything I needed.

We built a 32" wide by 14' sled out or plywood and 2 x 4s with the front 1/3 being flexible and some holes in the front to put straps through...... we had 8 strong guys plus spotters lift this thing down out of the door and place it on the sled...... from there we towed it and turned it in a zigzag pattern so the sled always was perpendicular to the grade..... and then right up into the truck and screwed it to the floor....... the other end was fun to..... slid it off the sled onto a heavy duty job box on big casters.... I figured it looked like it could hold a ton or more..... then into the building with only 1/2" to clear the door height...... and then slid it on too it's finial base. The nice thing was we only had to lower it down once and did not have to dead lift it up off the ground. Move went well without any problems......

if you use the scissor lift, I would find a way to strap or clamp it to the table the instrument is on.
two alternatives, slide it off onto a pile of cribbing, and tetter totter it down to a pallet jack, this is what I would do. Easy 1 1/2 man job and 30 bucks worth of 4 x 4s
Alternately, make up an aluminum I beam gantry, support one end on table the other on floor. A sculptor friend of mine made up a modular aluminum gantry that goes around corners and is adjustable in every way possible for installing relatively heavy objects in private houses, galleries, etc. he once moved a 1 ton stone sculpture onto a pier in the middle of a living room that had to be moved down a hallway and two corners, it never touched the floor.

My math skills SUCK, but looking at your link and a metric conversion chart, 250kg - 1 lb. = 0.4536kg. 250kg=113.4 lb. ?????did I miss something?

To those advocating shop crane keep in mind if it was possible to use one I would already have thought about the folding leg type (or simply taking a standard one apart and reassembling it in the room) so there must be a reason that won't work. And the reason is the cabinet it's sitting on is 36 inches deep and goes all the way enclosed to the floor. So it's too wide for the legs to wrap around and they can't go underneath either.

TimW, to convert kg to lb is 2.2 x, so your math skills don't suck but your gathering of conversion figures does

Re scissor lift table....is it my imagination but didn't HF once offer a larger verions of the one shown ? I've got a hydraulic die lift table that would be perfect for this except the darn thing is only an inch narrower than the door opening so no way it would make the turn into the hallway.

Tim,

"My math skills suck". Your skills can be improved, don't give up.

"Did I miss something?" Yes. You are multiplying when you should have divided. Best way to keep this straight is to remember that the fraction x/y is 1 if x=y. And you can multiply a number by 1 without changing it's size, right? So if we agree that 0.454Kg = 1lb, we can create a conversion factor of
1lb /0.454kg, or about 2.2lb/kg. Multiply 250kg by 2.2lb/kg. You get:

550 kg*lb/kg.

The way you know you did it right is that that kilogram (kg) units cancel out, and you have 550lb.

Jim

An anecdote: (Forgive the repetition from previous posts) The famous Nobel Laureate and humorous book author*, Richard Feynman, was giving his Nobel lecture, using the blackboard for some equations. He stopped and walked off the stage. The crowd was at first interested, then concerned. Started buzzing. Whereupon Fenynman strides back onto the stage, writes down a number, and turns to the audience, and says "No human should do units conversion in public".

*"Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman"

An easy to remember math trick for conversion is; if the multiplier is a decimal fraction, (less than 1) simply change the 'X' to '/'. Examp; 250/.4536=551.14638447972 or, 250 divided by .4536 equals 551.14638447972

In this case, 250 is the multiplicand and .4536 is the multiplier.

Bob