Some of my projects

[mike77]

First up is what is commonly called a "meat rack" in the entertainment industry. It's just a cart to carry lighting instruments around.
This was mostly my design, with input from the lighting supervisor as to what he was looking for. It was built primarily from 2"x2" tube, with some other sizes thrown in. Sorry I don't have better pictures, this was from a previous job so I can't just walk up to them to take better ones.

[Gadget]

Looks like that kept you busy for awhile Mike. Nice project.
Dan

[mike77]

Looks like that kept you busy for awhile Mike. Nice project.
Dan

Thanks Dan. IIRC, it took us about 2 weeks to build 2 or 3 of them. Mostly it was myself and an assistant, but we had a couple of other guys come in to help at various points. The first one was a test. I designed it to barely make it through the height of a set of double doors out of storage onto a lift. It should have fit, but I didn't want to trust that. So we tacked the first one together enough to move it then took it for a test drive. The headache was that we were working in another building from the one it would be used in. So a group of us lifted it off the dock, rolled it through the parking lot, up onto the other dock and into the theater. It ended up clearing by about 1/2"! Then we had to reverse the process and finish it up. Last I knew, they're still being used 7 years later!

Mike

[mike77]

This was at the same job as the above racks. It's for storing and moving rolls of dance floor, a.k.a. marley. Each of the rolls weighs about 250lbs and we had been moving them by hand and flat bed carts. I had seen various designs of carts like this and wanted to stop lifting the rolls around individually. Not only does it store and transport the flooring, it also rolls and unrolls it.
Each piece is rolled around a piece of 4" sch 40 pipe. We cut flanges to go on each end to keep the floor from walking off the end of the pipe as it was rolled into place. The end of each pipe mounts on a pair of inverted straight casters to allow it to roll. Each level of rolls are held in place with 1" box tube held in place with bolts and wing nuts in case we wanted to pull a single roll out. Between the bar and the roll is a piece of conductive UHMW plastic as a bearing surface and to transfer static charges from the floor to the frame. We machined a slot in a piece of bar stock with the drill press to mount on the ends of the pipe for a handle to fit into to turn the pipe and roll up the floor. It takes two people to roll up each 66' long section of floor, with another one or two guiding it onto the roll.
The frame was built out of 2"x2", I think 11ga. We never weighed the whole thing, but estimates were about 2000lbs. It rolled well enough that I could move it by myself, as long as I didn't need to steer too much.

[mike77]

Another from that same job. I started there only about 6 months after the building opened. At that point, there was no barrier around these main sprinkler pipes. No problem, except they were in the interior portion of the loading dock. A lot of heaving items were rolled around in there. It wasn't supposed to happen, but a lot of times guys would push a box and either let it coast to a stop or expect someone else to catch it. We could just see that happening and instead hitting one of the valves or switches on these pipes! So we built this.
2"x2" box tube (anyone noticing a theme here?) with 1/4" bar stock for mounting plates. It was installed with drop in anchors so that if the pipes ever need to be serviced, the bolts can be removed and the whole thing pulled out of place. Unfortunately I didn't think to get pictures of the welds on any of these projects, but they all were pretty good if I do say so myself.

Mike

[arandall]

That Marley Cart is really ingeneous. I'm betting the rest of the crew was mighty thankful for it. You must have been a hero for a while around there!!!

[mike77]

Thanks Art. I can't take all of the credit it for it though. I've seen a number of them that are the basic idea. I just designed what I thought would work best for our use and added a few of my own tweaks. The one thing that I added that I haven't seen on other carts is the conductive UHMW strips and a drag chain on the bottom of the cart to ground it out. I worked another job that had a similar cart, and after rolling up a strip or two of marley the static charge on the cart could easily jump several inches! I once heard the spark jump to a dancer when I was 10'+ away. As far as I know, there has never been a problem with someone getting a shock using this cart so either it's working or not necessary.
Yeah, we were all pretty happy to have this. I'm sure it's saved a few backs and a number of pinched fingers/toes. I wasn't too happy with how the handles fitted into the rolls, but the guys have since modified it so it works a lot better.

[Gadget]

Great looking projects Mike. You must have lots of 2X2 stock laying around.

[KHK]

Nice work!! Looks great and it works.

[mike77]

Great looking projects Mike. You must have lots of 2X2 stock laying around.

Thanks Dan. Actually, the material was all bought new. I was designing these (and a couple other projects) at the same time and was trying to get as much commonality of materials as possible. Some of the designs were still in the early stages when I had to order materials so I just had to guess what I might be able to use. So yeah, a lot of 2"x2" and 1"x1".

Mike