Shop Crane

[Janger]

I'm interested in a shop crane/engine hoist. Maybe making one or buying one. Looking online for ideas I bought some plans for a shop crane on amazon - turns out to be a retired engineer in Saskatchewan. Anyway digesting the materials list seems to show making one will actually cost more than buying one.

This one here at Princess Auto: http://www.princessauto.com/en/detail/2-ton-quick-lift-folding-shop-crane/A-p8210072e is $275 on sale for a few more days. I think the metal alone to make one from Steel Inc or Federal will be $250 or more. Then there's the hydraulic ram, wheels, paint, misc hardware. I suspect $400 to make.

The Princess one says it is a 200 pound package, most of that is the metal in the frame. They have to pay for all the other materials, actually fabricate it, ship it to Canada and pay for the Princess Auto markup. Thats about $1.37 a pound for everything. Impossible.

So how much is steel in big quantities for a manufacturer, esp. a manufacturer in China? There must be significant economies of scale. Anybody know anything about pricing realities?

 

[Janger]

Googling .... https://www.metalprices.com/metal/steel/seamless-pipe-shanghai-ex-warehouse
$0.27 per pound Canadian FOB Shanghai for Seamless Steel Pipe including tax.
$0.17 per pound Canadian FOB Shanghai for hot roll plate including tax.

Going by that say $0.20 per pound average * 200 pounds of steel in a shop crane is $40. ah ha. I see.

Hot roll plate Price in USA is
$0.35 per pound Canadian FOB East of the Mississippi.

How many pounds do I have to buy?

 

[Jwest7788]

Googling .... https://www.metalprices.com/metal/steel/seamless-pipe-shanghai-ex-warehouse
$0.27 per pound Canadian FOB Shanghai for Seamless Steel Pipe including tax.
$0.17 per pound Canadian FOB Shanghai for hot roll plate including tax.

Going by that say $0.20 per pound average * 200 pounds of steel in a shop crane is $40. ah ha. I see.

Hot roll plate Price in USA is
$0.35 per pound Canadian FOB East of the Mississippi.

How many pounds do I have to buy?

I could be wrong, but I suspect that pricing is done in large numbers (ton?)
Here: https://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?fsb=y&IndexArea=product_en&CatId=&SearchText=steel+plate
First listing high end pricing is ~$2300 per ton, or like, $1.05 per pound, which is what we would pay to buy 1 ton. low is $500, or $0.23 per pound, but thats probably like 500 tons or something stupid.


(Side note: If you need you can borrow my hoist in the mean time, it's much like the princess auto one.)
JW

 

[Dabbler]

If you can borrow Jwest's for a short time, Princess auto has them on sale regularly, usually for about $80 off. That really biases it in favour of buy versus build.

I currently have on the go a 'slow project' to build a gantry crane. a 2 ton gantry crane is about $2600 without the hoist, and a one-ton at Princess auto is about $1000. I have my main beam already, paid $50.00 for it, and another $100 for the casters with brakes. I figure another $300 in bits and pieces before it will be working. I think the high price is related to the low demand...

 

[Tom Kitta]

See whatever you can get a pallet of cheap steel from an auction. It is all rusty but at right price might be a deal. From usual suppliers of small (no more than say $200) the price of steel is around $1 CAD per lbs... which gets expensive very quickly.

 

[Dabbler]

Scrounged the main beam (a 4X8 .188 wall square tube). I'll keep looking for deals: I can wait for the right price!

 

[CalgaryPT]

I'm interested in a shop crane/engine hoist. Maybe making one or buying one. Looking online for ideas I bought some plans for a shop crane on amazon - turns out to be a retired engineer in Saskatchewan. Anyway digesting the materials list seems to show making one will actually cost more than buying one.

This one here at Princess Auto: http://www.princessauto.com/en/detail/2-ton-quick-lift-folding-shop-crane/A-p8210072e is $275 on sale for a few more days. I think the metal alone to make one from Steel Inc or Federal will be $250 or more. Then there's the hydraulic ram, wheels, paint, misc hardware. I suspect $400 to make.

The Princess one says it is a 200 pound package, most of that is the metal in the frame. They have to pay for all the other materials, actually fabricate it, ship it to Canada and pay for the Princess Auto markup. Thats about $1.37 a pound for everything. Impossible.

So how much is steel in big quantities for a manufacturer, esp. a manufacturer in China? There must be significant economies of scale. Anybody know anything about pricing realities?

I own this exact same PA model. I too looked at building one a few years ago and came to the same conclusion as you did after crunching the numbers, and that was even with some off-cuts I had laying around the shop. As I have got older I've bought both this crane and the lift table they sell -- both are indispensable and I wished I had them years ago when I still tried to pretend I was Superman. A while back the air over hydraulic ram ( http://www.princessauto.com/en/deta...long-ram-pneumatic-hydraulic-jack/A-p8338048e ) went on sale and I talked the guy in the south store down a few more bucks because I thought the hose might have been damaged. Turns out it wasn't, but I got the o/h ram for $85 or so. It was totally worth it...I love hitting a switch and watching it lift.

Only issue I had with the crane was (and this will sound odd), that the tolerances on the outrigger holes for the clevis pins are a little too tight. Some slop in them would make it easier to set up because most garage floors are slanted for water removal. So with the outriggers extended, and a pitch to my garage floor you have to lift the front of the crane up to get the pins holes to align every time you pull it out and use it. I've thought of drilling them out, but think instead I will rig a little foot lever on the base so I can easily lift it up myself and insert the pins w/o having to prop the whole front end of the crane up an inch or two just to get the pins in. I'm sure it would be fine on a level shop floor (or perhaps my garage is pitched a little more than normal), but that's no reflection on the crane. Or I might even weld some retractable levellers on it with 1/2" carriage bolts so I can just hit them with an air socket to raise and lower the crane when I align the clevis pins. We'll see...

But I'm very happy with it. As Dabbler says, this model goes on sale frequently. It folds up to a small footprint too, which is nice. It's just painful to buy something you know you can make yourself isn't it?

 

[Jwest7788]

I own this exact same PA model. I too looked at building one a few years ago and came to the same conclusion as you did after crunching the numbers, and that was even with some off-cuts I had laying around the shop. As I have got older I've bought both this crane and the lift table they sell -- both are indispensable and I wished I had them years ago when I still tried to pretend I was Superman. A while back the air over hydraulic ram ( http://www.princessauto.com/en/deta...long-ram-pneumatic-hydraulic-jack/A-p8338048e ) went on sale and I talked the guy in the south store down a few more bucks because I thought the hose might have been damaged. Turns out it wasn't, but I got the o/h ram for $85 or so. It was totally worth it...I love hitting a switch and watching it lift.

Only issue I had with the crane was (and this will sound odd), that the tolerances on the outrigger holes for the clevis pins are a little too tight. Some slop in them would make it easier to set up because most garage floors are slanted for water removal. So with the outriggers extended, and a pitch to my garage floor you have to lift the front of the crane up to get the pins holes to align every time you pull it out and use it. I've thought of drilling them out, but think instead I will rig a little foot lever on the base so I can easily lift it up myself and insert the pins w/o having to prop the whole front end of the crane up an inch or two just to get the pins in. I'm sure it would be fine on a level shop floor (or perhaps my garage is pitched a little more than normal), but that's no reflection on the crane. Or I might even weld some retractable levellers on it with 1/2" carriage bolts so I can just hit them with an air socket to raise and lower the crane when I align the clevis pins. We'll see...

But I'm very happy with it. As Dabbler says, this model goes on sale frequently. It folds up to a small footprint too, which is nice. It's just painful to buy something you know you can make yourself isn't it?

Mine has the same problem with getting the pins into the support feet. I think it's poor design more than the floor in my case though.

Same with me, very happy with mine.

 

[CalgaryPT]

I'm interested in a shop crane/engine hoist. Maybe making one or buying one. Looking online for ideas I bought some plans for a shop crane on amazon - turns out to be a retired engineer in Saskatchewan. Anyway digesting the materials list seems to show making one will actually cost more than buying one.

This one here at Princess Auto: http://www.princessauto.com/en/detail/2-ton-quick-lift-folding-shop-crane/A-p8210072e is $275 on sale for a few more days. I think the metal alone to make one from Steel Inc or Federal will be $250 or more. Then there's the hydraulic ram, wheels, paint, misc hardware. I suspect $400 to make.

The Princess one says it is a 200 pound package, most of that is the metal in the frame. They have to pay for all the other materials, actually fabricate it, ship it to Canada and pay for the Princess Auto markup. Thats about $1.37 a pound for everything. Impossible.

So how much is steel in big quantities for a manufacturer, esp. a manufacturer in China? There must be significant economies of scale. Anybody know anything about pricing realities?

One last comment on making our own shop cranes...aside from the pricing issues. Something I discovered is that it was harder than expected to size tubing such that you can telescope it. Maybe it was a bad day at Metal Supermarkets when I was building my receiver hitch crane a few years ago. I was scouting for 0.125 wall and couldn't find two pieces that telescope. I did eventually found two 0.188 wall (3/16) off cuts and used that. Boy do I regret it. It is so overbuilt and heavy now I hardly use it as it is usually heavier than the thing I need to lift. I suspect the crane manufacturers have access to odd sizes that the average guy doesn't. But I find it sometimes difficult to source two large tubing sizes that can telescope for things like cranes. Sometimes I get lucky. The real lesson for me was not to overbuild something I have to carry around and set up myself.