Help! Moving a big lathe...

[M250cnc]

I have done such a thing more than once so i am speaking from experience.

An engine hoist is a must i used one with a capability of 2 tons

A pallet truck will fail because of instability and the whole of the machine would have to be sitting on the forks and you will fail there too.

I made a dolly this would be as wide as i could get through the door way and as long as the base of the machine this was made from 2 x 4 steel tube welded fixed to this are 200mm dia castors HD around £23 each from machine mart.

To travel from the front of the house to the back, i used 2 x 4 steel U channel with welded brackets that fixed the channel to a cross member that fitted between a doorway. So you are effectively making a railway track so the thing cannot come off the rails.

They were cut to 8 foot lengths and even then it took an incredible amount of effort to get them up the rails.

Machines moved Bridgeport, J&S 540 surface grinder & Myford cylindrical grinder

The worst cast scenario is the machine falls over causing damage the worst case scenario is someone gets killed if it falls on them if you fail to take the required precautions.

One last thing, you have left it way too late to ask for advice.

Phil

[Hopefuldave]

I moved my Holbrook (2 tons of it), with the assistance of my lad and one of his mates - little sis towed it home with her Ringe Raver on a plant trailer, then the trailer was dragged up the garden with a Tirfor-alike (which cost more to hire than the 5-ton rated trailer...).

Once *close* to where i wanted it, we laid a bed of 2x4's on bricks (to level it) and Egyptianed (technically Hebrew Slaved, but the bosses always get the credit!) it with a 5-ft crowbar, wood blocks and some steel plate (fulcrum) until we could get a few 5-ft lengths of scaffold pole under it (the Holbrook base is a mighty, flat-bottomed piece of cast-iron) to roll it off the trailer, then winched it as far as we could before it "grounded"...

To get the beached lathe off the trailer, we hooked the Tirforoid to a convenient tree and dragged the trailer out from under it... the final 1/4" drop as the ramp came out from under it was quite exciting :)

Once on the 2x4 runway, a ratched strap through the lathe base, around a 6-ft scaffold pole hooked over the *far* edge of the concrete meant I could pull it up a slight slope 4" at a time while the lads wedged the rollers, then once roughly where we wanted it, we spun it on the rollers and levered into place with the big prybar - Robert was my parent's sibling.

I didn't have to lift it up any steps, but my plan would be to lift it a step at a time, using the engine hoist if you have one or a good lever, ensuring it's kept stable (thus only a short lift at a time) and raise the platform to match the step. If it has lifting holes in the base, USE THEM and put something substantial through to make outriggers so it can't f