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4:46 pm
May 13, 2010
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For the last 6 years I have been borrowing forklifts or paying neighbours with forklifts when I need a forklift. I don't need one that often but I am loading and unloading more trucks than I used to and there are times where using a forklift to flip heavy patterns over would be much safer and easier on my back. As well I can do without the stress of worrying about whether I can get one when a truck arrives. The one I use the most is my next door neigbour's, it is a small electric forklift only 34" wide and 68" long. It does 95 percent of what I need but it will only lift about 1200lb. But about 3-4 times a year I ship out orders that are about 5000-7000lb, this means that I either need to spread the load out into double the number of skids or make other arrangements.
I have been looking around the last few weeks for a forklift and am hoping to pick up a beater machine because it will spend most of its time parked in the shop or often out on the street during the day. I have been hoping to pick up a 3000lb small electric machine to keep the fumes down and so its maneuverable around my small shop. There are two machines that I am thinking of. One is a 2500lb electric lift at a dealer $1800, they claim the battery is good and will deliver for $200, I have yet to go see it because it is in Toronto which on a good day is an hour each way but can often be 2 each way due to heavy traffic. One of my neighbours is moving and wants to sell his 5000lb propane forklift also for $1800. It runs reasonably well but does need a tuneup. My big concern is that it will be physically too large for my shop. The shop is 60x25 but I have posts running down the middle of the shop, Most of the machinery is on the one side and I try to keep the other side for work in progress but I do have shelves and racks down the side and some machinery on wheels on that side of the shop. I barely have room to turn the larger machine sideways in the shop.
Anyone have any input or things I should be looking at when looking at the forklifts?
5:50 pm
August 2, 2010
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John, I'd always be cautious about buying a used electric forklift. You can be sure that part of owning one is someday going to be replacement of the batteries. If you do buy one be absolutely sure the price you are quoted includes the charger for your machine.
I have a very small (2000 lb) Allis Chalmers from the seventies which is propane powered and narrow enough that it will go through a standard 36" door. I made fork extensions and a jib boom for it and it does almost everything I need it to though it seems these days that my neighbors use it more than I do. It was very inexpensive to buy several years ago and I jumped on this one mostly for that reason. It's been an excellent machine but the one problem I have with it is that it is equipped with solid warhouse tires so it can get stuck outdoors if the ground is uneven or muddy. (Which can easily happen when your shop is on an old farm.) That may not be a problem for you if you have a paved area where you do your truck loading but if you are on dirt you will want to find one with pneumatic tires and an articulating axle (or at least combo cushion tires intended for mixed use). Many warehouse trucks will lift a drive wheel on uneven ground and then you are stuck. I love it for indoor use in my fairly crowded shop but I'd like to someday get a slightly bigger one with pneumatic tires. Look at the turning circles and fork lengths of the individual trucks you are considering and plan out your usage before you commit to a particular unit. You'd hate to find out you can't manuever it where you most want to. Steve G
4:11 am
NWBA Member
August 1, 2010
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"Forklift" covers a lot of things.
"Small electric" could be a stand-up, a walkie-stacker (a thing you walk behind - you don't want one, trust me), or something like my marrioti. I like the marrioti a lot, but "beater" and "cheap" do NOT describe it.
http://www.crown.com/usa/produ.....index.html
http://www.mariottiusa.com/mar.....8/usa.html
Note that the marriotis are *really small* - mine will just about, or perhaps actually, fit thorugh a man door. And it can lift 1900#.
Note, however, that a few feet of floor space must be devoted to the charger, and mine requires a 30amp 115volt circuit. Not hard, but does require work to wire up.
And I still find myself wishing for a crane...
However, for loading trucks, especially closed trucks, nothing beats a forklift.
By the way - forklifts are very safe when used correclty (which is not hard) and I think much much safer than some of the things people (including me) do for want of access to one.
I've never owned an internal combustion engine forklift - so a good question would be can a propane forklift be stored outside (perhaps under a tarp?)
1:13 pm
May 13, 2010
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Thanks for the replies, those Mariottis looke very nice but outside my buget for a machine that will be sitting idle 99 percent of the time. There are weeks where I am loading or unloading 4-5 trucks but also many weeks where I don't do any. Usually it is one or two skids at most 3 or 4. I probably average 1 truck per week lately. I am always loading on the paved road but the pavement is a little rough on my driveway getting in and out of the shop.
I am starting to lean towards this electric lift http://www.hermanstools.com/3-.....Lb-toronto
because I would not be able to use the propane one to get in to lift off the sow block from my hammer or lift things on or off the shelves on the side of my shop. Also the propane lift has very thin indoor tires and three wheels seems like it would be less likely to hang up on two wheels which does happen to me with the neighbour's 4 wheel forklift with solid outdoor tires. While the extra lifting capacity would be nice the only time I lift more than 2500lb is moving machinery which I don't do that often and I can do with a pump truck or round bars.
3:44 pm
March 22, 2010
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That looks to me like it would be a fine machine for the work you describe. As said before though the scurge of used electric lifts is the battery. A replacement battery would most likely exceed the used cost of the forklift... for 48V systems they range from $3000-$7000 for a new one.... Just about anything else can be repaired or replaced reasonably but if you lose a cell in the battery the whole thing pretty much becomes scrap.. there are no used battery's to speak of because the battery virtually always is the reason why the lift is removed from service I have only ever owned one electric lift and ended up scraping it after a year or so of service because the battery gave up.. (I currently own a 6000lb air tire/propane Dawoo made in Korea that has been a great machine, I also just sold a 5000lb Hyster air tire lift) But many years ago I worked as a forklift driver at a Green Giant food freezer... we drove 5000lb Hyster electric machines (we worked at 40 below in the freezer so they where modified with cabs but basically just a forklift) and we would change the battery's twice a day ( 12 hour shifts, Id come on and have a fresh battery from day shift and change it before going home) So because of the cold we could only work in the freezer for 45 min at a time... crazy job... every 45 min I would get a 45min break... so every lift ran 12 hours out of every 24, 6 hours per shift..... and the battery's would last 2 years before needed replaced at a cost of around $5000 each.... Of course by needing replaced I mean they would not be strong enough to make it through 6 hours of use... Anyway I guess my long ramble basicly comes to this... I think the little electrics are great but I would have an expert check out the battery and give you his opinion... If the battery is weak I would walk...
Whatever you are, be a good one.
Abraham Lincoln
3:55 pm
March 22, 2010
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bryanwi;3534 wrote:
I've never owned an internal combustion engine forklift - so a good question would be can a propane forklift be stored outside (perhaps under a tarp?)
most defiantly... but not under a tarp would probably be better... for long storage a cover like a costco tent would be better..
Propane is a far better fuel for a machine that does not run every day.. a propane motor can sit for months at a time and no fear of fouling up the fuel system... I have been around forklifts that only ran a couple times a year with no issues
Whatever you are, be a good one.
Abraham Lincoln
10:26 pm
Kind of off the topic, but I have several forklift tines and parts thereof. Anyone know what they're made of?
JE
12:06 am
August 14, 2010
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John Emmerling;3553 wrote: Kind of off the topic, but I have several forklift tines and parts thereof. Anyone know what they're made of?
JE
Steel?
2:54 am
March 22, 2010
Offline3:12 pm
Larry L;3556 wrote: 4340 I think is a pretty safe bet..
Thanks
JE
10:14 am
May 18, 2010
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Good fork tynes (especially large ones) are often 8740 which has .4% Carbon .9% Manganese.5% Nickle. 5% Chromium, .25% Moly I used a large chunk of one to make our top die for our 5cwt massey, still going strong 10 years later.
12:06 am
August 2, 2010
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John Newman, I don't know if you made a decision and bought a lift but I came across this pic last night when I was looking for something else. I figured you guys might get a chuckle out of it. (I'm the one on the ladder) Here's my little Allis Chalmers holding my Hossfeld at a convenient height just off my loading dock so we could prebend some angle one way prior to bending it into app. four foot rings. I needed a little more clearance than the shop floor would give me (grin). The Hossfeld table was already configured so I can move it with my pallet jack so it seemed an obvious way to do it. I routinely drive this thing into the shop on a ramp through the man door since I don't have a garage door at ground level. The little lift is quite a contrast from the Pettibone telehandler I was checking out renting today for snagging a machine out of a really tight spot. The specs on that one say it will lift 7,000 pounds at twenty feet out. Steve G
3:28 am
May 13, 2010
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Friday I bought the lift I posted a link to last week. It was supposed to be delivered today and was not but I have been assured that it will be delivered tomorrow by 10:00. The battery seems good and I am getting a charger with it. It has two extra hydraulic valves one runs the sideshift the other is a spare, so potentially I can put on or build a manipulator for it.
I like the idea of a hossfeld mount for the forklift. Why were you bending vertically? was it so you didn't need material stands? I did put a pocket out by the sidewalk so I can mount my hossfeld on a post and use a handle too long for inside the shop. There are advantages to being the last building on a dead end street, I can put my material stand in the middle of the street.
I was planning on building an attachment for the forklift that I could either put a boom on or short forks out the side. I think I will have to also make it so I can mount my Hossfeld and other things to it as well. The small forks out the side are so I can bring long bundles of steel into the building through a 10' wide door, and load heavy bars into my bandsaw. I am thinking only about 12" long and possibly cupped. Obviously I will only be lifting things a few hundred pounds out the side and close to the ground so the machine does not tip over 🙁 .
6:19 pm
August 2, 2010
Offline
John, Congratulations on the new toy; I hope it works out great for you.
The reason I had to feed the material in that wierd vertical configuration was that when using the Hossfeld inbend angle dies (or any inbend operation really) you are basically trying to upset part of the material of one flange into itself rather than stretching it like a flange out bend. There is a ramp in the die holder that is supposed to provide sufficient force to let that happen and hold both legs at 90° to each other but it doesn't really work that well and the distortion causes the flange to open up past 90° and create an extrememly shallow cone preventing the ring from lying flat. We needed the flanges to really be in the vertical and hoirizontal planes (well at least the customer wanted it that way) so I first prebent the material 90°from what I wanted and then fed that shallower bend into the machine's dies so that when the part you see going into the bender passed through the dies it was rebent into an approximately four foot flange in circle with no conical distortion.
My Hossfeld is mounted to a table/base that I mounted the hydraulic unit to and which will eventually have the racks for dies added to it also. The bottom of that table is two sections of 5" angle so that I can run the pallet jack or forks under it to move it easily. I do the same with a few other tools in the shop like my pyramid rolls and a semiautomatic aluminum cutoff saw I use only occasionally. When I built bases for my T slot tables I made sure that they could be picked up easily and moved with the fork lift or the pallet jack too.
It's funny but you'll find yourself tooling up your forklift just like a mill or such to get the most out of it. Steve G
9:07 pm
NWBA Member
September 29, 2010
Offline
I'm evidently way late to this discussion but since I work for the larget manufacturer of lift truck forks and attachments I think I can answer this. We almost exclusively use 1537HC wich is a high chromium alloy or 15B37 which has a teeny bit of boron in the soup. The difference comes in the thickness with the HC material used for the smaller sections.
1:21 am
May 13, 2010
Offline
I get it now Steve, I took a better look at the picture and see that the bender is bending horizontally.
Lift arrived this morning on a flatdeck towtruck. Seems to be good, I am able to turn it around in the shop which was borderline with nextdoor neighbours smaller capacity forklift.
Next week I may have some time I think I will pick up some tubing that will fit over the forks to make the sidelift tool. I have some 13.5' bars coming in about 2 weeks that I have to bend the ends on and ship them out a few days later. The customers truck is not very reliable for picking them up so I will then be able to band them up inside the shop so they are ready for pickup. Most heavy tools in the shop are already set up so they can be lifted with my pump cart. Assuming it will lift it it should make moving the platen table much easier.
10:56 pm
August 5, 2010
Offline
I wouldnt worry to much about the state of the batterys on an occasional use truck. My little 1500kg is, im guessing, on its original 30 year old batteries, they are covered in furr, some are swollen, and a couple of the cells have been bypassed they are that dead. Give her a few hours on the charger and the old girl will unload 20 ton from a container, over an hour or so before needing a little top up on the charger.
Its a big bonus to me to know that shes not going to run out of gas on the day shes needed!
12:05 am
May 13, 2010
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Forklift is working great now that I have the charger working. It quit first time I used it. I took it back to the dealer (good hour each way). He had guy come in and look at it told me there was nothing wrong with it. So I went back and picked it up it worked at the dealer. Ran for a couple of hours and quit again. My Dad and I then spent an hour or two finding the problem, loose timer would kick it out and then not reset. We epoxied it in place and it resets now. The charger kicks into finish charge so it doesn't charge very quickly but it sits around most of the time so that's not a problem.
Sure is nice having the lift though, used it repairing hammer the other day and unloaded truck today.
12:57 am
November 8, 2010
Offline
I've always had a soft spot for Hyster equipment.
Used to have an old Buda gasser out in California. I didn't like running it very much since the driver seat was completely exposed with no safety cage.
Little guy was loyal, though... It'd fire up in a fit of misses and hiccups and finally smooth out.
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