Another possibility is an hydraulic lift table. Put chuck on shelf on little wheeled carriage, roll onto table , lift to lathe bed, lower flap between table and bed to roll off chuck. Arrange that wheeled carriage to be at correct height to screw onto nose.
If there is room in your shed for a bigger hydraulic table that could also have a small crane arm added with the table providing the vertical movement. A sub table might be made using roller drawer slides to move things off storage onto table then onto mill.

Also instead of hydraulics and electric winches some smaller movements can be achieved with screwed rod turned by a battery drill, or perhaps permanently connect a old mains drill as there are plenty around now we have all gone battery.

Hi, this is what I did in my garage, but it was in the plan during the building of my garage, and all the material was free. It has had 300kg on it, without any issues.

Regards Nick.

What,s wrong with a simple lifting platform using a trailer hand winch ?

I built one some years ago [not my plan, just a copy ] and it does everything I require.

Simple and cheap to make and serves as a “place to put things out of my hand ”

It can be brought right up to the lathe bed or mill table height and if your chucks are arranged to sit on “mother blocks “, they will end up at the correct height every time.

Heavy mill vise ?, no problem ! Broken foot ?  No way !

BTW, I think it was Dave Fenner who made the one I copied

Just a thought !

On 19 October 2024 at 15:46 larry phelan 1 Said:

What,s wrong with a simple lifting platform using a trailer hand winch ?

Nothing at all. Purely a horses for courses question.

Lift table is great for sliding transfers from bench or shelf to machine but not so good for anything involving up’n over or pick up from the floor which generally leaves you with some hand effort.

Crane is better for direct pick up and anything involving swing over. But a simp-le mobile crane has issues with the legs getting in the way.

Considered a lift table to make life easier with the vices, rotary tables and dividing head that i use with my Bridgeport. Eventually decided the cost and space it would take up wasn’t justifiable for something that couldn’t help with the big chucks, and sometimes big jobs, for my large P&W Model B lathe.

Given a clean sheet of paper the best option for me would be a roll cart with integrated crane holding all my heavy items. I have too much heavy gear to get away with a single compartment on top without making the thing impractically big. So I need to figure a way to give the crane access to two lower layers of drawer style compartment without then thing overbalancing or breaking the drawer slides. Using an off teh shelf cart like the Snap-On / Bluepoint ones means that only some of teh behave gear can go on the cart. The rest will have to be picked off shelves.

Clive

Thinking in terms of just a simple block and tackle, a four fold purchase would allow a 100Kg load (A large chuck in my book. I am in my mid 80s and can still just lift a 8″ four jaw into place)  to be lifted with a 25 Kg effort on the rope. A simple pin in a hole would act as a safety lock.

Probably less in actual practice, allowing for over engineering and/ or safety factor, more likely to be 10Kg or less effort.

Possibly literally less effort and complication than a powered winch with trailing cables.

If shop made will not be certified (Will any shop made crane?) but most probably over engineered for the job, and cheaper.

Howard

I had a similar problem so I designed a pillar crane that uses a Clark 500kg pulley block.

It runs on 40mm square box section and has a length of scaffold pole for the upright. The diagonal tie is 10mm threaded rod. The scaffold pole sits in a taper roller bearing on the floor and has a plain sealed ball bearing at the top.

I now have two of these units, one for the mill and one for the lathe. Their swings overlap so I can do transfers as well.

I like the idea from Les if the roof or wall is strong enough to take the side thrust which rules out a fair few sheds.
Can anyone give advice on length/weight capacity for that kind of beam.

Pero

I’d like to know where all those mobility scooter hoists go too.

Especially as a goodly fraction aren’t used for more than the dispiriting few years between when granny/grandad becomes frail enough to need one so they can get around and when they become too frail to drive it.

Mine was around £70 and about 25 miles away off Facebook but it took maybe a year or more to surface. Regularly saw a few on E-Bay but generally the price was higher than I wanted to pay and/or the distance to great.

I’d caution about using a mobile bench as a base. Having experienced several mobile benches, albeit not in my workshop, they don’t seem work out that well. No immediately obvious reasons but generally just not good to use. Mobile storage drawers work better and also keep stuff clean.

When I kitted out my workshop approaching 20 years ago I used cut down three or four drawer filing cabinets to provide storage space under the benches. two full depth drawers and one cut down to half depth came out at a suitable height. As the common British filing cabinet drawer has half height sides I made lift out trays to increase capacity. Two trays per drawer, a single tray is just too hard to handle. Paper by the yard is heavy so filing cabinet drawers and runners are well up to the load of chucks, vices dividing heads, rotary table et al.

As a result of this discussion I think that when I finally make my crane device I will use ex filing cabinet drawers and runners, cutting the drawers down if needful. Whether best approach will be to fit a three drawer cabinet with castors and slot in extra drawer and runner units where needed or devise my own frame being an open question. The hoist will go on one corner with one pivot of the electric ram being on a pull out pin so the hoist collapses. However I have 12″ chucks, 10″ and 12″ rotary tables, 6 inch vices and a large dividing head to deal with so need more mass handling capability than most folk. Plenty of mass in the drawers makes tipping unlikely!

If you are going to make your own crane the bent jib and electric actuator design typical of scooter hoists is effective and compact. The main drawback is not being able to get single lift floor to bench or machine capability. So provision must be made for an intermediate rest stop and variable length connection between jib and load. In this application a sufficiently minor inconvenience to be tolerated. The alternative of a fixed jib and winch gets cumbersome.

You could build your own actuator with a nut and threaded rod to be driven by a battery drill. As i originally planned to do. These days I’m doubtful as to whether the costs savings compared to buying a nice Far Easter import actuator is really worth the effort. Power tool battery adapters for most major brands can be gotten quite cheaply, along with DC to DC converters if its needful to drop 18 volts down to 12 volts, so your power tool battery can be used to drive the actuator. Hence little worry of the battery being flat when you go to use the device and no need for a power supply and trailing cable for reliable, plug in to the mains, power.

Clive

Have you seen the 250kg lever hoists available from Sealey or Yale? They give good control of a load and do not require external power being hand operated.

Martin C