How to "shorten" an Alliant Mill

I gave this a smidge of thought and here would be my suggestions from a guy that spent one summer forming concrete. ideal would be tieing into the existing foundation with some no4 rebar. I would also make the new pad about a foot bigger on each side of the mill, maybe more in the front if you are tallish.
i would make the pad an easy 6" and use mesh. I would make the sides 8" (making a mini footer). and i would drill holes into the sides of the existing slab with a 1/2" bit. slide the bent no4 into those holes then tie the no4 to the mesh. throw in a few bars accross for ****s and giggles, and spend the next day carrying buckets of concrete in.
the idea is overkill is way easier than doing it twice, or worse having your mill list after 3 winters.
dont forget some visqueen, pick up some heavy duty in the painting section of home despot or Lower than Lowes.
 
Re: How to "shorten" an Alliant Mill

SBA9,

If you only need a small bit for height, and you have a standard lumber joist: like a 2" x 10", Why not beaf up your joists to lets say for an example a double 2" x 8".

There are joist span tables that you can use. If you have questions , contact me.

Al.

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SB9 So what you would be doing is removing a section of the bottom of the joist and doubling the width.
Al.
 
Unfortunately the existing joists are 2 x 8. Its a 1962 vintage house.
 
Lazy Boy headquarters has a section of the original shop preserved as part of their museum. More than one of their machines in that original shop was positioned between the rafters for clearance. I would opt for that first, then putting it in a pit as a second option. Just be careful of creating a trip hazard with the pit option. You'd hate to be concentrating on machining a part, move slightly to get a better view of what is going on, and stumble into a rotating spindle.
 
+1 on trying it between the joists first just to see if it's impossible to live with. If you decide to sink the floor how do you propose to get the machine into and out of the pit. Is this a step pulley machine? If so, you might be able to come up with an arrangement to off set the motor and mount it upside down off the back or side of the machine. Make a jackshaft to mount the motor pulley where it originally was mounted and drive it with a 1-1 pulley arrangement from the offset motor. This presumes that the motor is the tallest part of the machine.
 
I'm starting to warm up to the idea of centering the motor between the joists. It is a vari-speed drive configuration, so I'm stuck with the motor "up". The height of the mill should be about equal, or 1/4" or so lower than the joists depending on what the true hieght is after I level it up. In deciding whether, or not cut and pour a footing, what is the minimum existing floor thickness I could accept as safe (determined by test bores)?
 
sb9a said:
what is the minimum existing floor thickness I could accept as safe (determined by test bores)?
Click to expand...

It depends by the quality of the floor.
If the house was made in the '60 I assume the quality was not very high (at least here in Italy: in those years we had a "building bubble" with a lot of quick-made homes).
To be on the safe side my guess is 8 inches, assuming the weight of the mill is evenly distributed, but this depends by the gravel/cement ratio.
To test the hardness of the concrete there is an instrument called sclerometer, but I strongly suggest you to show the floor to a structural engineer, possibly one with a direct experience of 1960 building methods.
Don't forget the vibration damping, too: old building don't love too many vibrations.
 
sb9a,
not to scare you about the robustness of a floor, but take a look at the images 14, 15 and 16 of this slideshow reported by the Italian newspaper "Il Corriere della Sera":

http://www.corriere.it/foto-gallery/cronache/14_gennaio_17/treno-deragliato-ad-andora-fd81229c-7f94-11e3-aa77-33cce3d824e3.shtml#14

As you can see, the parking lot now half-way down the hill is "robust", like the wall below it, because they didn't break after the landslide, even if now it's not economically reasonable to recover them.
Many years ago I went on that same parking lot to make some land surveying, and it was totally "vibration free".
But sometimes just "robust" is not enough, when considered out of the surrounding context!
 
Hello Marco,

Not only does it scare me about cement structural integrity, I'm also a bit worried about my trip home tonight on the commuter rail!!
 
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