Overhead Crane in my Garage

I have a pretty large garage, 38' X 42' with 14' walls. Plenty of room for a car lift, which I have been planning on installing for a couple years now. A couple months ago, though, I ran across an overhead crane for sale that would fit nicely into my garage. There is room for both, so I decided to go with the crane while a great deal was at hand. I will get to the lift later ...after I've saved up some cash again.

OK, so why a crane? Well, first is car hobby, which includes rebuilding an engine from time-to-time. I'm sure that's enough for most folks in this forum, but on top of that, my wife is a metal sculptor. Most of her pieces are smaller and light weight. But she's been making bigger and heavier pieces of late, so an overhead crane really opens up the possibility for her (plus, made it easier to convince her that a crane was a great idea!).

Attached are some pictures. From the day i brought it home on a friends trailer, to some installation pics. I will do another post with more pics.

Happy to chat about the process if any interested beyond this.

Here are a few more pictures.

The floor has a pretty good slope, and drops 4 3/4" from one end to the other. Rather than cut the columns shorter on the higher end, I installed some spacers on the opposite end. See pics.

Oh, and also showing the wedge washers I used on the I-beams to take up the slope on the flange of the ibeam.

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Will you have some triangulated supports at the corners?

Nice fat tire wheels!

GirchyGirchy said:

Will you have some triangulated supports at the corners?

Nice fat tire wheels!

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Good question on the braces. The guy I got it from had it in his building for 15 years, and it had no bracing, so my initial thought was no more bracing needed. But, I keep thinking of things I can do to make it even more secure. Perhaps that is one.

Thanks

Oh, regarding the fat tire wheels, they were hanging on the wall out of the way - until they were in the way and had to be moved again.

Looks good, practical for a garage like this.

sberry said:

Looks good, practical for a garage like this.

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Thanks. Yeah, I think it is exactly what I need. I'm not rebuilding monster engines. My cars are an MGA and a couple Model As. Relatively small 4 cylinder engines.

LarryWP said:

Thanks. Yeah, I think it is exactly what I need. I'm not rebuilding monster engines. My cars are an MGA and a couple Model As. Relatively small 4 cylinder engines.

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Nice work on the crane. Pics of the MGA please.

Brian R said:

Nice work on the crane. Pics of the MGA please.

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OK, if I must.

1957 MG A. Not a show car, but a very fun driver.

May you enjoy your crane for many years in good health.

This is great stuff. I have one piece of feedback for future. Typically in structural steel the flange of the beam is not drilled as that creates a weak point with a smaller amount of bearing, plus is non-adjustable.

A detail often seen is like this with a "clip" that more or less pinches down on one of the flanges.





Now you are probably going to say to me that the "T' shape hanger has its flange drilled. And you'd be correct. This holds a lesser load and is overdesigned for what the vertical leg can hold.

Another way to do this is to place a heavy square plate between the two crossing I-beams and create the clip details on skew planes 90 degrees to each other...which I tried to draw up here.

Typical structure also relies on deformed thread/torque prevailing or anti-loosen hex nuts instead of tapped holes, so if the holes all go concentric and simplified to be 4 holes instead of 8, then threaded rods and torque prevailing hex nuts can be used in clearance holes, no tapping.

I tried to draw this here in a couple of very rough sketches to help illustrate.





In any case I don't want to be a guy nitpicking your nice system. I hope you use it in safety and health and enjoyment in the shop. Good job erecting it, getting everything rigged and leveled and parallel is not a small task!

How did you locate it and what kind of prime mover hoist is it? What capacity is it rated to?

Right, the span is only so strong that it will fail way before the connections.
This job is exactly the kind of thing I would do. The load at mid spans limited but obviously increased with deliberate rigging. Don't always have to move the biggest thing everywhere.

Matt_I

Thanks for your comments. No need to apologize. I nitpick all the time, and in the end we do the best with what we have. And I do appreciate your comments.

I used a laser level to keep everything in line, then simply measured distance between holes on the long beams to determine placement of columns. One of the long beams has a bit of a curve in it though. I noticed it but thought I could force it straight by putting columns in straight line. I could not, so had to relocate an end column an inch over. The carrier seams to follow the curve just fine.

I don't know the brand of the beams and carrier assembly. It has stenciling on the cross beam indicating 1 ton capacity. The chain fall/hoist is 1/2 ton CM Valustar. .

Cheers!