CustomDesign

Custom Design and Fabrication


Rusty's BBQ Trailer (AKA "The Meat Wagon") This is a folding sign for Rusty's BBQ. The requirement was a twelve foot tall sign that could fold onto an eight foot wide road legal trailer. The solution I designed was a wire and pulley system that would unfold the top section of the sign while electrical linear actuators are raising the lower section. The end result is a twelve foot high, twenty foot long sign that can be raised and lowered by a single person in about three minutes. The sign sits on top of a trailer that is upwards of ten feet tall itself. YouTube Video of BBQ trailer folding sign in action Rusty's BBQ on Facebook

Silo Lid Replacement Project

The top of this silo was nearly rusted through in spots and the baghouse was functioning poorly. In addition, the railings were in poor shape. The best overall solution was to replace the entire top of the silo.

The lid was fabricated on the ground with new railing, flange for new baghouse and and access hole in the centre. For installation, the new lid was made two inches smaller than the old one and a four inch flange of the old top was left for it to rest on. This flange was inspected and found to be in good condition prior to installation. The old lid and baghouse were cut away in pieces and the new lid was lowered inside the old railings. After tack welding the new lid in place the old ralings were removed and the new bag house was installed. The lid was then welded solidly to the silo completing installation.

I can be seen kneeling in two of the photographs.

YouTube Video of the silo lid on the ground

Venturi Vacuum

The need was a vacuum that could pick up steel shot from hard to reach places.

For a compact and effective package I built this vacuum powered by compessed air.

The air is fed in a small pipe through the manifold to the back of a converging-diverging nozzle. When the stream of air is turned on it pushed a large volume of air down the expanding bell section, causing a very strong vacuum to form in the manifold and the hoze attached to it. Anything sucked into the hoze is ejected from the bell section.

Oil Catch Basin

An basin to catch and collect spilled oil. Designed to be buried with front lip at ground level, and back lip against a wall. It has a covered sump area where oil and water can collect and be pumped out.

Not pictured is a small tray to catch any rocks or sand that may be washed in.

Wall Mounted Tarping System YouTube Video

A wall mounted tarping system to speed tarping and untarping of concrete forms. The bay this system is in is not tall enough to allow all the forms to be covered with a single piece tarp, so the tarp must fold itself in half as it is raised.

This folding action is achieved by cables running over wheels at the base and at the folding knuckle in the centre. As the tarp is lowered tension in the cable is increased and the outer tarp segment extends. As the tarp is raised tension is decreased an the outer segment retracts.

A single cable pulled by a winch is all that is needed to support and actuate the whole system.

Wheel Abrador Installation

A wheel abrador needed to be installed on a severly sloped floor. Drilling through the concrete slab revealed the ground underneath the slab had settled faster than the slab itself, and that there was a signifigant void below the slab. The conciderable weight of the machine (and the material that would be run through it) meant that the slab needed to be shored up from below.

My reccomendation was to utilize AB foam to support the concrete slab from below.

I drilled holes for the rebar leveling bars and in turn mixed and poured liquid AB foam mixture into each. After a period of time the chemical reaction within the mixture caused the foam to "blow" and increase in size by a factor of about 20:1. I used a wire to probe the level of the foam below each hole after the foam had hardened and conducted further pours as neccisary to bring the level of the foam up to the bottom of the slab. The last pours had foam expanding out of the drilled holes ensuring contact with the bottom of the slab.

Rebars were expoxyed into the holes and a steel leveling plate installed ontop of those.

The machine has not settled or become unlevel during the time of its operation.

NU Safety Cage

A rolling set of railings to allow workers to power wash and sandblast on top of precast concrete NU-girders (a type of concrete I-beam) without having to wear a fall arrest harness.

The unit is made of left and right railing/wheel assemblies linked together by a square tube at the front and back. Pins allow for assembly without tools and replacement of the two cross tubes allows the railings to accommodate any width of NU-girder. Large diameter polyurethane wheels with ball-bearings allow it to roll on the rough top surface of the girder with little force.

YouTube Video of the NU Safety Cage