Lets Talk Gantry Cranes

[KBeitz]

For anyone wanting to put a crane in your shop...
Look into a Pole crane. If you can weld use a length of well casing
and put it in the center of your shop. Tie the top of the casing right
in with the building. This way you can swing the boom right up to the
door and move things anywhere in your shop with a trolley.

 

[cvairwerks]

Really have to watch your engineering with jib cranes tied to a building structure as part of the support. There are lots of forces that come into play, A moving load can impart enough force to wreck things in a hurry if you don't take it into account for the design. A guyed boom requires significantly more height and overhead space than a cantilever design.

We had some freestanding ones at work. 500 lb capacity at the end of a 20 foot boom. Column was 24" diameter and 1/4" wall, 28 foot above the floor. The sockets for the columns were set in 10 foot cubes of concrete.

 

[Spring Hollow]

I built a rolling bridge crane which rides on I-beams suspended from the roof trusses which were designed to take this into account. It was pretty inexpensive since it was built using used I-beams and HF trolleys. Hard to beat almost complete coverage of the shop.

Ken