I have really enjoyed all of your videos. I have been fabricating for 40 years and you have given me new ideas for my shop. As far as your rolling gantry crane goes, I would tie the extensions together with maybe some thin wall chrome moly tubing to keep the weight down without sacrificing strength or rigidity. The thing looks plenty strong to me. As long as you stay within its strength parameters of it should work fine. If you bend it, that's part of the learning curve too. From what I've seen of voir work ethics, to me to be an excellent fabricator and welder. Not all of my welds look like a row of dimes either but I've never had one fail due to lack of penetration, or because I put too much heat into it either. I also weld almost exclusively with TIG.

I see most of the commenters have the same idea that you should cross brace the extension legs. It won't matter if you always use it strictly to pick and drop a load. If you ever try to move it under load lateral forces on any single leg could overcome the fasteners attaching the leg to the tubes and cause a collapse. The same thing may also happen if a load shifts while being picked or placed. It's water under the bridge now, but I would have opted to either disassemble the uprights and make them longer or as is the usual method, place a smaller telescoping tube inside of the uprights and gain some adjust ability.

I like your idea of a leg between caster legs, will always hold together and no worry of leg spread down there with a very heavy lift. NICE JOB FOR SURE MIKE.

compliments excellent work and beautiful workshop

Great job! Keep up the good work! 🤙🏻

HI Gary, Good to see you are getting more of your equipment into your new shop. It all takes time - sometimes more than we would like - but you can get everything positioned better without clutter you would have if you just moved everything at once. Looking good. Hope the rain slows down for you soon. Take Care, Reid

Really a good job . thanks for sharing the video

I am not an engineer, but looking at the original framework, I would say that some sort of tie would be in order. With the kind of weight you are planning on lifting, then moving I would be concerned about those extensions twisting or breaking off. "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." as the old saying goes.

Really like the double duty drill press!

Another great video! Keep up the good work man

Sounds strong but I think I'd box it in at the bottom just to be safe. $50 in steel may save you a bunch if it were to fail.

yes u should brace that runs the length of it can be made so u can remove it along front and sides for support bolt on with angle iron 4 bolts on each min

I know its late in the process and the ibeam may not be strong enough to be longer but if it could straddle the trailer or a dually pickup it would serve you forever. I built one with a friend years ago and we made the legs adjustable where your extensions are a fixed length. looks great and a gantry is a great addition to the shop.

Man Gary, I'm glad you've got Mr Smooth in the shop to take the beatin' ! lol

Nice job Gary

It will make a heck of a swing;) looks good

there's no wrong way just something that works well for me keep on making the great videos

Do a Load test and measure the deflection, not only the center I-beam but most importantly the leg splaying. I would guess the thing is good for a 1/4 ton before the legs splay a tenth of an inch. a tenth of an inch is within the elastic limit of the steel, but because it may work harden with flex, don't plan to load it to the point of any significant flex.

Nice use of the new chair. Surprised at how fast you can change clothes while also switching the polarity on the welder when trying to tack that roll of blue shop towels together.

I like the idea of connecting the casters. I also hope you're using grade 8 bolts where you connected the extensions.

LMAO at the sander shredding the belt. Watching that happen just reminded me of the stroke sander that I have. I bought the sander back in the late 60's to sand flat wood panels for my woodworking shop. The belt for the sander is 8" wide X 360" long or 36 feet of sanding belt. The sander was set up on the 40 ft sidewall of room it was in. Every now and then the belt would catch the corner of something that was being sanded and rip and inch or too off the edge of the belt and it would fly out very much like your sanding belt did. When the belt ripped it usually ripped about 30 foot of belt loose and it could reach out to almost anyplace in the room. Boy when that belt tore loose it was like a bull whip being snapped into the room so anyone in the room dived for cover behind something until the person that was using the sander could crawl along under the sanding table and reach the shut off switch. Believe me when I say that everyone had a lot of respect for that machine and paid close attention to it when it was in use. Another thing about that sander was that the friction that it generated from the sanding belt rubbing the wood surface being sanded caused a huge amount of static electricity and if it lost its ground to earth for any reason it would act like a huge capacitor and discharge a blue lightening bolt several inches long that would knock you off your feet. Everyone got into the idea that if you were going to be using that sander you filled a 5 gal bucket of water and took it outside and dumped the water onto the area where the earth grounding stake was pounded into the ground to make sure the grounding wire had a really good ground. If the soil where the grounding stake got dry the stake sometimes lost it grounding effect. Thanks for the memories Gary, Cheers OLDDUDE

Mr. Smooth is ballin' today!

Gary I agree with Retro Weld Also when at your mag drill if you take that water bottle in the scene and drill a super small hole in the center of the cap use it for your oil/coolant applicator. Actually use a 20 oz pop bottle the plastic is thicker. That's what I use on my mill for putting coolant on when drilling it's a cheap container

Add me to the list of boxing it in... Glad to see the progress! Bet that belt sander hurt like heck.Hope you are well!Tom

you could also get a longer I-beam and swap A-legs if you ever need more width, your I-beam supports would do the same and you will have full movement of your trolley.

Well done. Should be plenty strong for what youre doing with it. No brakes on the casters? You could make yourself a spreader bar for rigging with the chain fall.

brace from wheels up to the center of original cross brace

Wow,Mr Smooth sure took a beating on this one. Glad you are OK. :-)

Since you asked I think something between the extensions would be a good plan. Better safe then sorry when lifting heavy weight and would hate to see you get hurt.

Nice job. Is the Beaumont sander new? Are you happy with it? I'm thinking of buying one.

looks solid to me, Greg has some great advice about the diagonal braces..and I keep hearing 'we', but it's only you lol..u must be talking about Mr. Smooth lol

Ooooh, mag drill stand very nice!!!! Ha ha now Ya now what getting kissed by a lion feels like. Great video!!!

Gary- what are the dimensions of your shop? Do you have any idea how much the pad and metal structure cost? I am looking into building something similar.....

It looks a little gangly. The failure point will be where it joins the beam at the top. The lever force is strongest there. If I were going to suggest anything it would be to lengthen and beef up the diagonal bracing at that point. The failure point where the extensions meet the existing frame will be the fasteners. Connecting bars or another attachment point could help, but I doubt you need it...

Hi, maybe I'm wrong. But the vertical beam on your crane is the load bearing one and the Angled ones are mainly for stability it seems. An now pretty much all the weight on the Angled outriggers. Thanks for your videos. Greetings from a welding collage in Amsterdam

I would be strongly motivated to put an X brace between the legs, I just don't trust bolts alone when it comes to moving heavy things,

Becomes difficult to calculate the actual load capacity of the thing. Cross beams would definitely strengthen it.

Yes i know about breaking chips with the bottle it allows to get oil/coolant in the hole better.

If you over load it to the point where the legs fold you might want a lower brace but I think it's good as is.

Looks like you'll need to build a bridge over the pond Kwai for your next project sir...What sort of weight are you expecting to lift Gary.?

This design is good, a bottom link would help but not necessary. The flaw is extending it from bellow in the first place; It adds extra torque to the sq tube, but unavoidable since its already built. Well executed. I approve.

What's the lifting capacity? and how would I find out the material thickness of a beam on the top of the gantry crane (The blue section in your GC) if I wanted to lift 2 ton with a 3m span across the top?

Nice Gantry, I was wondering how much weight you think that will lift and hold?

needs an X brace in the new section. That will be really handy in your shop with the extra height.

i wanted 2 watch u use it to take the brake off the trailer...looks as if u have had overhead a/c put in?

I would box the bottom by going with 2 90 degrees from center to bottom of the legs.. Then it would like like you designed it that way..

Them sanding belts hurt when they slap you!

An advantage of that design is that you could lift something and then slide a couple of pieces of C channel across the old bottom horizontal members. Then set the piece onto the channels and roll it as a cart rather than having the cargo swinging around as you move.

Maybe it needs more support or maybe it doesn't. Could lead to more Mr. Smooth clips in the future! If wanted to make it more beefy, I would add an additional post in the centers where the main column comes down on each side. The angled bars from the top are for preventing the main vertical columns from bending over but most of the load goes down the center columns. Then tie all 6 extensions together close to the floor.

no one else has probably seen this, but I would personally put some bracing between the wheels.

pretty cool

Link the casters for sure😉

I need to learn how to build this tools like this.

i do not know it very well, but in my opinion, maybe it is not safe

you weld so fast lol

The columns taking the weight are in the middle with nothing under them. I would create the lifting ability by 75 or so percent in this configuration. What you are missing is a truss underneath the lower horizontal tube. it should be shaped like two triangles pointed up so that each point hits the midspan, and a vertical 4 inch tube in the center, and of course the bottom bar that spans just above the casters. in other words, you would build a large rectangle with a column in the middle and a upside down V in each half. Hope that makes sense...

Gussets would work fine on those extensions.

looks like you changed your grinding stance the second time around

If it were mine I would box the bottom just for insurance.

I would brace it more with the amount of weight you will be lifting would not want it to fail looking good though later

um its to tall for the shop now it seems so you limit how much its used

That belt slapping looked painful !

I also need to build a gantry crane. You got your metal pretty far away from your shop.

need some wheels on that chair.

this crane is good but you have a great shop a over riding crane is better and you have nothing down

I love the vids,but if you don't mind taking the gunshots out they kinda shock me.

What the hell was wrong with your welds Mike, sounds like a narcistic ballless man whinning cause someone else can weld good.

Those are some shity looking welds

Really? Justin Beiber?