catching up

[cannuck]

Since I haven't been here for the last few years, I will put in some of my purchases of late. Sold off some equipment and bought a plot of unbroken grazing land and started collecting stuff to build a shop that will become my on-farm business location. Started when an old Danish machine tool rebuilder (Frank for the locals) was retiring and sent my wife to his sale. She picked up a Marvel 8 and a Chinese dovetail mill to start the process. I managed to find a matched pair of 5 ton x 47' bridge cranes (2 sales) that defined the shop width (I was going to go 40, but now need 50). As prices for materials went nuts, had to start buying stuff to make my own concrete, so a 8 yd transit mixer, a 941, foam equipment and C7 dump plus cement silo came next. Picked up a D5H for earthworks and borrowed (long term) excavator. Made a storage shed (2 x 40' containers, 20 x 40 space with OHd crane and tension fabric full envelope. this last year, 100T press (new from auction - damaged crate only!!) 400 ton 12' press brake (accupress clone) and 15 x 50 Colchester VS) pretty much brings us up to date. Just found a much newer Marvel 8 Mark I in pretty good shape, so will probably sell Frank's later. All of this stuff came with some work needed, obviously all very used - but as many here will understand with a lot of useful life left after a bit of work. WAY short on tooling, and still need some other big stuff - but all in good time (I hope).

 

[Proxule]

Wow, I am adding up these items in my head..... Impressive list.
On farm business, Like hobby farm growing veggies and goats plus machining services or what is the plan here?

If I win the lotto I would love a shop like yours, I almost won the lotto the other week. I was 7 numbers short

Welcome back, Post lots and enjoy your time!
Take care!

 

[cannuck]

First product is going to be trailer axles. I have built some 26k trailers and it is literally impossible to get commercial quality hubs, brakes and suspension, never mind ABS in 10k and 12k axles, not much better at 8k. Will build some trailers as well, but probably too expensive for anyone but a dead serious buyer so probably only on order to spec, not stocking (other than demos). Might take on some medium duty upfitting. Also might be distribution point for a product out of UK we hope to have in production this year.

 

[Chicken lights]

Why do you want ABS? And what do you mean by commercial quality?

I’d be curious how you’re going to get the spindles square to the axle tube.

 

[cannuck]

Why do you want ABS? And what do you mean by commercial quality?

I’d be curious how you’re going to get the spindles square to the axle tube.

There has been ABS in all class 8 trailers for 30 years now. Trailers with farmyard junk axles (read: Dexter) don't have enough brake to stop safely. The basics of convergent yaw stability in any vehicle is to have more force (i.e. braking effort) aft of the CofG. Towing a typical piece of crap trailer means the greatest braking power is ahead of the CofG - thus divergent in yaw stability. When you up the ante to 12k, most axles use 16" dual wheels with a 8 on 6.5 hub. That leaves enough room for a rotor that could maybe stop a compact car - whereas 12k is the GAWR of the steer axle of a semi. You think a compact car brake is appropriate for a semi???? One of the secrets of stability of modern HD trailers is indeed their ABS. It allows the axle to be extremely stiff as differntial deflection side-to-side (i.e. roll) is critical for stability. Before ABS you couldn't do that as a bump on one side would lift and lock the wheel under braking on the other side. I could go on for a few more hours on this topic.

getting spindles straight/aligned is child's play - but our specific design makes it even easier.

 

[Chicken lights]

There has been ABS in all class 8 trailers for 30 years now. Trailers with farmyard junk axles (read: Dexter) don't have enough brake to stop safely. The basics of convergent yaw stability in any vehicle is to have more force (i.e. braking effort) aft of the CofG. Towing a typical piece of crap trailer means the greatest braking power is ahead of the CofG - thus divergent in yaw stability. When you up the ante to 12k, most axles use 16" dual wheels with a 8 on 6.5 hub. That leaves enough room for a rotor that could maybe stop a compact car - whereas 12k is the GAWR of the steer axle of a semi. You think a compact car brake is appropriate for a semi???? One of the secrets of stability of modern HD trailers is indeed their ABS. It allows the axle to be extremely stiff as differntial deflection side-to-side (i.e. roll) is critical for stability. Before ABS you couldn't do that as a bump on one side would lift and lock the wheel under braking on the other side. I could go on for a few more hours on this topic.

getting spindles straight/aligned is child's play - but our specific design makes it even easier.

Great info!

The reason for the questions is I don’t run ABS on trailers, I found ABS increased my braking distance and ever since I preferred no ABS. It’s a scary feeling having ABS control braking, rather than the driver

10-12k axles? Are you talking metric or regular math? Most steers are 12,000 pounds max, yes, but drives or trailer axles usually are 20,000 pounds (in Canada)

 

[cannuck]

10-12k axles? Are you talking metric or regular math? Most steers are 12,000 pounds max, yes, but drives or trailer axles usually are 20,000 pounds (in Canada)

Yankee Doodle Dandy poundage. The rules around trailers have a break point similar to the one for trucks. 26k is where you go from virtually no regulation and no enforcement to the structure of things such as actual brake performance requirements. For tagalong trailers, that's a minimum of 2,600 on the tongue and 2 x 12k axles (ours will be single wheel 19.5 with REALLY BIG discs and calipers, air suspension and ABS)