Home made jib crane for the shop

[Dave J]

Hi,
I built this crane a few years back and thought I would post it here.
Some may have already seen it but I though a lot of new guys may have not.

I will post in the next few months about a bridge crane I am building. It has 7.6 meter runways and 3.6 meter span.

After some research on the internet (not much out there) I built this jib crane. It was made of scrap that I picked up in a dumpster and the main post a mate gave to me.
The beam is 150mm x 75 (6"x3") and is 2.3 mtrs (7.5ft) long made up of 2 pieces welded together. The vertical leg is 1mtr (3.2ft) long.









The bearings retainers are from the rear diff of a Nissan 720 4x4 pickup with a standard 30mm inner bearing in the top retainer and the bottom one with the original taper bearing from the axle. There is a 40mm (13/4”) square trailer axle machined at both ends to suit the bearings welded to the back of the crane. I made plates up to go around them and welded them to the crane as extra insurance.

I made the brackets up to hold the bearing retainers are out of 10mm (3/8") plate and they bolt onto the 100x100mm (4"x4") thick wall post. They bolt on to the post with 4 x 20mm (3/4) HT bolts top and bottom. I welded the nuts to a 300mm x 90 x 6mm ((1’x 3 1/2”x1/4”) plates top and bottom and then slid the plates inside the post while it was laying on the ground. A couple of small countersunk bolts hold them in place until the post goes up and the bolts go in. The top plates are 150 x 150x 10mm (6”x6”x3/8) with the same 20mm bolts and the bottom plate is 300x175x20mm (1’x7”x3/4) with 5x 16mm (5/8) pins into the concrete. I made the dummy bolts at the bottom because it has to be removed to another location latter. They have a hex head but no thread and are hammered 75mm (3”)into the tight fitting hole in the concrete.














You will see in the photo that I made up some temporary angle brackets with thread bar to do the final adjustments to the post when the crane was up, before welding the bottom. I was lucky I did that as when I first put it up it needed to go higher than I thought. So I lifted it 150mm higher and had to redrill more holes and plug up the old ones.



The beam trolley is made up to suit the electric winch and I had an old beam trolley that I got the wheels off.





Just after getting it up I decided I needed a cable festoon for the electric wires so I found a deal on eBay plastic wheels and made some trolleys up out of 3mm (1/8”) plate.
I made it so the controller is separate from the winch and left provision for the power controls that I will be fitting latter to move it in and out and side to side.







I haven’t used it alot and it has stood up to the task and have even lifted my 400 odd kg lathe with it. All up it only cost me $25Aus dollars and that was for the stickers and the festoon wheels.

Dave