The Handiest Thing I ever Built (Manlift)

[Bedlam]

OK, I did the homework, you provided a great site for more funny ones.
There, I Fixed It
Allot of goofy pics to see at this site.Thanks...

BTW the above pic has how many men? Couldn't they have made a human pyramid to reach? LOL

 

[jimgerken]

Glastron23: Thanks for your concern, but please take a bottle of pills and settle down Dude! These things have been used as long as there have been loaders on tractors and will continue to be built and used despite their safety's dependence on common sense. I have seen guys working while standing in the buckets of tractors, no railing and no saftey harness. These cages that replace the bucket are way better. As far as hyd failure, I will believe it when I see it. I have lifted and continue to lift stuff with the loader that it will barely lift and makes the tractor unstable, in my case thats about 1750 lbs. Its a tested system. Then I put on the manlift cage and add one man's weight and it is being loaded at one-fourth of what the system has been tested to. I feel safe in it.
The grade 8, 3/8" bolts I put in last year were to replace the 7/16" lynch pins which were made in China. I have since fixed the 1.125" pins and now they again accept the Chinese lynch pins. Can't tell if I feel better or worse about it.

 

[Stampeder]

jimgerken, I totally agree with you. One has to accept a certain amount of risk in anything one does through life. I have worked for telephone companies for 30 years. I can tell all sorts of horror stories about bucket trucks.
About a errant tree branch falling on the controls......well first of all the controls on my tractor are several feet back from the tree I work on, but more to the point, I have a cab tractor and the controls are inside. So even if this should happen the limb would have to be one **** of a big one to crush a rollover proof cab. Remember my tractor weighs over 6000 lbs and the cab is built to support the weight.

I do not use this lift on a day to day basis but I still built it with substantial parts because I AM GOING TO BE IN IT....
One can find all kinds of possible things that can happen but then one would stay in bed all day and never do anything.
It truly is the "Handiest Thing I ever built" and I thank Jimgerken for posting it.

 

[curly]

That thing looks very handy but I'm doubting it would hold my wife

 

[brokenot]

I can tell all sorts of horror stories about bucket trucks.
About a errant tree branch falling on the controls......

Was something on the equipment disabled when those incidents occurred?

I'm just asking, because I've been in the rental biz for ~25 years repairing and maintaining personnel lifts....from little 19' DC scissors up to 135' 4 X 4 booms and they all are built with at least one dead-man device preventing accidental and unintended actuation of the controls.

Stuff can fall all over the controls and nothing is going to happen unless the operator is stepping on the footswitch, or squeezing the joystick enable trigger, etc. at the same time.

Oh, we get stuff back off rent every day with all sorts of inventive bungee cords, rebar tie-wire, bent pieces of welding rod, wraps of duct tape or electrical tape, etc. "bypassing" the dead-man safeties.....but then any horror stories told by the operators are their own fault. One manufacturer's line of equipment we carry added a 7 second delay relay to their controls package years ago to circumvent the operator's....ummm......creativity in bypassing machine dead-man devices. The timer relay gives the operator 7 seconds from the time the dead-man footswitch is depressed, until he or she actuates a controller. If the 7 seconds elapses without a controller command from the operator....functions lock out completely until the footswitch is released and depressed again. So that carefully sawed hunk of 2 X 4 the operator cut to "bypass" the dead-man doesn't work when he wedges it in the footswitch, because the relay just times out and locks out all of the functions.

Then the site foreman calls and wants me to drive out and "fix" the machine that "doesn't work".



Not trying to be a "safety nazi" or anything, I'm just saying.....

 

[Charlesaf3]

I'm just wondering about the real danger here - has curly been killed by his wife?

 

[jimgerken]

Must have. TBN funeral in order.

 

[Iplayfarmer]

I'm just wondering about the real danger here - has curly been killed by his wife?

If not, he could be on the lam running for his life.

We could set up a network of safe houses accross the country.