My Home built Loader

[Max2310]

Keep up with the great work!! Very nice!

I recently started making stuff out of junk metal for my tractor and enjoy it alot! Seing this feeds my desire to continue...

 

[rhamer]

Yeah, you start out with "I'll just add a bit here" and before you know it, your onto a FEL

Cheers

Rohan

 

[Iplayfarmer]

Keep up with the great work!! Very nice!

I recently started making stuff out of junk metal for my tractor and enjoy it alot! Seing this feeds my desire to continue...

A lot of guys will bad-mouth "recycled" metal, but if you're willing to spend a little time with a wire wheel you can make a lot of nice stuff for very little money.

 

[nedly05]

Very nice... great fab work!!

 

[allenr]

Looking good. Interesting to read about all the time spent making bushings. Bushings and pins were pretty inexpensive at the store I bought my cylinders. I would by a 5" bushing and cut it into 1" or what ever thinkness needed on the bandsaw. You can see an uncut bushing and a pin on the table in this shot.

David, the bushing on the table is relatively thin walled, did you get the thick walled one (as pictured on the bottom of your fabrication) from the same store?

I've never found much heavy wall tube unless I buy 6 metres of what they call "hollow bar" from a steel merchant and that is very expensive.

 

[allenr]

I have an oxy-acetylene set, and the long-term loan of a Lincoln SP-125 Plus flux-core wire feed welder.... and I did enroll in a welding class earlier this fall/winter. Not an expert by any stretch, but I now feel quite comfortable with oxy-acetlyene, with or without filler (at least up to 3/16" thick), and can stick pieces together with the wire feed. An angle grinder I don't have-- yet.

Don't know how I ever managed to make anything without a grinder or a lathe.

I now have 4 grinders beside my welding table and vice, 2 x 9" and 1 x 4" and 1 x 5". One big grinder has a C/O wheel and one a grinding wheel and likewise the small ones.

Now with ultra thin C/O wheels another one or two more would be handy but then I'd never untangle the cables!

 

[allenr]

Rohan, that loader looks really good, you are a legend.

How did you taper the 75 x 125, was it freehand with the grinder?

Hope you're still married!

 

[jimgerken]

Great work! If you are serious about a test of the hydraulic range and don't want to involve controls or messy oil how about using compressed air? That should be relatively simple. I can't imagine why it would be unsafe or harmfull to the cylinders. Anyone?

 

[J_J]

David, the bushing on the table is relatively thin walled, did you get the thick walled one (as pictured on the bottom of your fabrication) from the same store?

I've never found much heavy wall tube unless I buy 6 metres of what they call "hollow bar" from a steel merchant and that is very expensive.

Most any steel vendor will sell you his minimum length, be it 10 ft, 20 ft or whatever. That tubing is called DOM tubing, and stands for Drawn Over Mandrel. You can get short length from this vendor.

MetKit Corp - Home Page

Select Catalog of parts, Select HTML, Select Bearings, Pins, and Tubing.

 

[rhamer]

Rohan, that loader looks really good, you are a legend.

How did you taper the 75 x 125, was it freehand with the grinder?

Hope you're still married!

I cut a wedge out of each side with an oxy/accet torch, then clamped the bottom in place and welded it.

However I probably wouldn't do it again. The problem is all this sort of fabricated stock still has inbuilt stresses from the manufacturing process, and when you cut it lengthwise like I did some of those stresses are released and it warps. Then combined with the welding heat, it made it very hard to keep it all straight. In fact each arm segment is actually bowed in the vertical direction. Fortunateley it's not enough to be a problem, and it's in the right direction, but it just shows how much steel will change shape when you work it.

Oh, and yes I'm still married

Cheers

Rohan