Vacuum Lifter

Here is my shop built vacuum lifter, made in the fall of 2008, for lifting heavy objects onto a CNC router table.

The hose on the right, is a blow-gun for removing any chips or dirt
from the object you are picking up. ^

I put a rating of 500 pounds on this lifter, even though it will do more. ^

Main rails are made from two pieces of 1/4x2 cold rolled flat turned on end.
This allows you to move the vacuum cups, in or out, depending
on the length of the item you are lifting. ^

Drilling plates for the handles to bolt on. ^

Piab venturi vacuum generator, with a solenoid valve attached to the
back of it. Uses shop air to produce vacuum
of about 23" of mercury maximum.
This was something that come with our cnc router that we didn't use
so it worked out great for the lifter. ^

2x6 Aluminum rectangular tube was sawed on an angle to make the
switch and vacuum gauge boxes.
This was the first project , welding on aluminum
with the new to me, Miller Aerowave welder. ^

Final assembly in progress.
Check out the welding table, it come from the junkyard
as is, with tapped holes and the milled lines,and its 1/2" thick.
I seldom have to use a square with all those lines to gauge from. !
Don't have a clue to what this bench was made for, sure makes one hell of
welding table though. ^

Drilling holes for the handle bolts on my 1960's 14x48 Clausing Lathe.
I rebuilt this lathe in 1997 (maybe another post on that?) ^


Switches for Up and Down on the hoist and On/Off for solenoid valve.
Cover is aluminum, milled out to slip over the rect. tube box. ^


Switches all wired up with 16-4 SO cord. ^

Vacuum gauge assembly.
I made the mount for this gauge, as it was not intended
to be a panel mount gauge. ^
Thats it for now
-John

Nice work... we did a lot of stuff like that at my old work, because with how much shop we had at our disposal, usually the stuff we could make was 2x as good, for half the price.

iandh said:

Nice work... we did a lot of stuff like that at my old work, because with how much shop we had at our disposal, usually the stuff we could make was 2x as good, for half the price.

Click to expand...

Yah, I just can't stand junk, make it good or don't bother at all.
If it was made good, I will try everything to fix it.
Some people bring me, consumer stuff that they want fixed,
most of it is junk, wont even touch it.

The real stuff, works better, lasts longer, and can be overloaded
from time to time without failure.

Made In USA, Milwaukee drills is one I can think of right now.

-John

cnc-me said:

Yah, I just can't stand junk, make it good or don't bother at all.
If it was made good, I will try everything to fix it.
Some people bring me, consumer stuff that they want fixed,
most of it is junk, wont even touch it.

The real stuff, works better, lasts longer, and can be overloaded
from time to time without failure.

Made In USA, Milwaukee drills is one I can think of right now.

-John

Click to expand...

Yep, I have a USA Milwaukee Hole Shooter that I've rebuilt twice, rebrushed three times, and put a new cord on five times.


Right before I left full time employment (I do some contract work now from time to time), I helped my boss to build an electric tug for his new Cessna. The cheapest onces were several thousand dollars, and were just plain sad as far as construction goes.

I built a beautiful one for around $1000, and it's superior to the other units.




What do you do in your shop?

what did you use for the suction cups ? i am needing to build this exactly for loading sheets on my plasma table. did you follow some directions or make it up as you wend ?