YY1
Well-Known Member
I bought this project at the estate sale of a late hot rodder/ metal fabricator.
It's made of heavy 6" C channel. all joints look to be stick welded.
I don't know what was used to make the holes for the bridge supports, but they are high precision holes that almost look punched! The supports are 1.5"!
I think this is possibly a 50 ton unit. 30 at the least.
There's a cable hoist to help raise the bottom bridge.
I added some guide rollers between the front and back versus the square tube that was there. The hydraulics were originally a porta-power. Expensive Enerpac brand.
It came with three small rams, but I've blown the seals on all of them
It had a large ram that was leaking badly when I got it. I looked for replacements on ebay and they were $1000 for one that size! That ram was bolted to a 1/2" plate welded between the top C channels, and the upper press bridge was free swinging and sprung to that plate.
It came with a kind of wimpy 7/16 press plate.
In order to use it, I drilled the press plate to accept the smaller rams and mounted it so it spanned the top C channels and reinforced it with a cut down hitch receiver between the 7/16" plate and the top 1/2" plate.
Sine I blew those rams, I'm fabricating a new press bridge and installing a 20 ton bottle jack.
Here I'm using the jack to hold the 7/16" plate and receiver brace so I can bolt it to the 1/2" plate. Note the 1/2" plate I bought (a pair actually) from a thrift tool store(!) for $6!
It's made of heavy 6" C channel. all joints look to be stick welded.
I don't know what was used to make the holes for the bridge supports, but they are high precision holes that almost look punched! The supports are 1.5"!
I think this is possibly a 50 ton unit. 30 at the least.
There's a cable hoist to help raise the bottom bridge.
I added some guide rollers between the front and back versus the square tube that was there. The hydraulics were originally a porta-power. Expensive Enerpac brand.
It came with three small rams, but I've blown the seals on all of them
It had a large ram that was leaking badly when I got it. I looked for replacements on ebay and they were $1000 for one that size! That ram was bolted to a 1/2" plate welded between the top C channels, and the upper press bridge was free swinging and sprung to that plate.
It came with a kind of wimpy 7/16 press plate.
In order to use it, I drilled the press plate to accept the smaller rams and mounted it so it spanned the top C channels and reinforced it with a cut down hitch receiver between the 7/16" plate and the top 1/2" plate.
Sine I blew those rams, I'm fabricating a new press bridge and installing a 20 ton bottle jack.
Here I'm using the jack to hold the 7/16" plate and receiver brace so I can bolt it to the 1/2" plate. Note the 1/2" plate I bought (a pair actually) from a thrift tool store(!) for $6!
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