Mobile Base For Shop Equipment

I was tired of looking for a heavy duty mobile base for my band saw, planer, jointer and sander so I decided to build my own. I had purchased the "universal" ones and was not too satisfied.

I wanted to design a mobile base like a small trailer using a trailer dolly as a moving handle. The mobile base would have two lockable fixed castors in the rear and two adjustable feet. The Trailer dolly would be used only to move the equipment.

Above shows the fabricated rectangular tubing unit finished and painted.

Above is the unit attached to the trailer dolly.

I attached the band saw to the base as shown above. Notice to the front are two adjustable feet. At the rear are two knobs to lock the rear wheels. Once in place the hitch and bracket can be easily removed.

It worked fine and I intend to build more. The dolly will lift up to 600 lbs so there should be plenty of capacity.

 

Now that is my kind of innovation!
Looks good and appears to work.
Congratulations!

RR

 

Milwaukee 800 lb. Capacity 2-in-1 Convertible Hand Truck-CHT800P at The Home Depot

What's worked for me is adding a piece of plywood to the bottom of the tools with a 2 X 2 cleat on the bottom.
I then use a Black and Decker Shopmate to set them on for a work stand.

 

The only thing I don't like is the tongue sticking out. I'd bang my shin on that for sure.

 

I was aware of this and took care of it with a removable tongue. Sorry for the poor pictures. If you look closely on the front is a flat vertical plate with a 1/2" slot for up and down adjustment. On the second picture you can barely make out two plastic knobs.

The tongue has two nuts welded to it (1/2") for the 1/2" knobs so it can be both adjusted and removed easily for storage. In this way it is transferable to other bases.

I built a second base is for a Jet drum sander and use the same tongue.

 

I like that idea for smaller and lighter tools. I have a sander that I will do that for.

 

Sweet! Removable tongue. You only need one then and can just move it to whatever machine you want to move. And, you have solid wheels on one end and adjustable steel pads on the other so you don't has as much machine movement as you'd get with pneumatic tires.

 

I made a second mobile base for my JET drum sander. Attached are pictures of the base, the detached tongue, and the pair, sander and band saw, stored. Both of these are large and heavy so I needed something rigid.

 

And I like how you turned the castor wheels so you could keep the frame as low as possible to the floor.

 

Thanks for the comments. For those who want to build one I thought I would pass on some details.

The frame is cut and welded at 45 degree angles throughout. The wheels are urethane. The dolly and the hitch come from Harbor Freight (why reinvent the wheel?). I purchased the knobs and adjustable feet online but could be replaced with bolts and steel feet.

The slots were cut on my milling machine but one could use two heavy duty 1/4" x 2" flat stock steel to accomplish the same thing. The steel is 1x2 tubing. I had the contoured 90 degree bend in my scrap pile.

I made the footprint a bit wider than the machines to give more stability. Since I don't always use all of my machines on a project it is nice to get them out of the way. The sander is new to me (I hate to sand). So is the band saw which I intend to do some re-sawing with.

I do both wood and metal projects which I can post from time to time if anyone is interested.

Jim

 

Obviously a well thought out system. Good job.