Making metal ramps.

[Bodfish]

Hey guys........I've got a utility trailer, flatbed, and need some new ramps for it.

Up till now, I used 2X8" fir, 5 feet long, with some aluminum pre-made angle type attachments. (JC Whitney, hard to explain).

Anyway, I've heard that you "should" be able to make something out of metal with the same strength of wood, but 2/3 lighter....

These ramps have to support a golf cart (1000 lbs), plus be moveable so I can run my handtruck and stuff up with different width frames.....

I've looked at a lot of designs, but draw a blank on this one.

I'm no engineer, but every design I can think up will weigh MORE than the fir...

Anybody got a good idea on how to design these things?

Thanks for any experience with this stuff!!
(BTW), I really want to be able to attach the ramps to the back, as a tailgate, when not in use)

[V10man]

I'd look into pre-made ramps. www.atvramps.com

[Hobbyist]

So then why were early planes made out of wood rather than steel?

To try to be a little more helpful, I'm not an engineer but I seem to remember being one some time in my deep dark past. You say it needs to support 1000 lbs. I take it that's the weight of the golf cart? So each ramp supports half of that. What's the distance between axles? If the ramp is only 5' long, I suspect you never have more than one axle on the ramp at a time. That would nearly cut the load in half again. So your worst case is a midspan load about 250 pounds. Could be a bit more if the front or back of the cart is heavier. Also, does the 1000 include a driver and any baggage on the cart?

Given that design load, I think a pair of 1" square .065" tubes would be plenty strong. A few cross braces of the same (think ladder) and cover it with some expended steel and you have your ramps, at a weight probably a bit under 15 lbs, not too different from fir.

If you want lighter, you might want to think about aluminum or titanium.

[Silverback]

FWIW, barring exotic alloys and hardening, wood, aluminum and steel strength per weight is about the same. Choose a material based on what you’re capable of building and the material’s inherent advantages in the situation (like it’s durability WRT to weather/water…).

If you want to make it lighter you need to build something that has some structure (shape) to it, so it distributes the loads put on it better. I would suggest something with shaped outer edges tied together with lighter weight crosspieces.

As far as to what to build it to support, I would strongly suggest that you build each ramp to hold the whole weight of whatever it is that you want the 2 ramps to support, since the 2 ramps will not be tied together and you don’t really have any way of guaranteeing that weight doesn’t shift, one of the ramps doesn’t slip slightly…

[luckeycubcadet]

I was going to build my own steel ramps. But when I saw the harbor freight ramps for 34.00, I could hardly build them that cheap. I now have several sets and use them for everything.

Watch the HF ads. They usually are on sale everyother month.

jon

[Rocky D]

It's true...sometimes it's better to buy, than to build.

[Sandy]

Well Bodfish, most of the fold up ramps are mounted on the back of the trailer via large bar stock. One continuous or a couple of long pieces. The bar stock is stood off from the trailer by means of heavy strap or plate strips. The ramps then have similar trap material or plates on the end/sides with the correct size wholes to allow them to swivel up and down and slide sideways to fit the wheel base. Problem is none of them are light. Many do have a helper spring built in to the design. That hand truck dictates that you use steel plate or diamond plate.

Run around and sneak a peak at some of the local backhoe trailers for some ideas.

[Bodfish]

Thanks for all the input, guys! But something is wrong with either the site of my computer.
All the posts are horizontal, and I have to scroll sideways to read anything!

Now this is a real pain, and I can't read many posts....

So, if anyone has a solution, please e-mail me at

mikev@aaahawk.com

I won't be checking back till this problem gets resolved

[Rocky D]

Maybe a smaller font size in the browser will fix it

[Bodfish]

Thanks Rocky, but a lot of the other guys on Welding Floor Talk are having the same problem........hmmmmmm. I'm no expert, but mebbe it's our OS or something. I'm using 98SE......

This is real crazy. Someone suggested that they screwed up the HTML code or something. Maybe one of the guys can find out what's up? I can barely stand this!!

[asad]

Just another data point, I'm using Mozilla Firefox at work on a Win2000 machine and Mozilla 1.7 at home on WinXP and they both scroll vertically.

Asad

[Silverback]

It would probably be helpful if you took a screen shot and posted it, and then report the post so an admin/mod sees it.

FWIW, a bunch of the forums that I pay attention to have gone with the new forums software in the last week, and I must say that I like it, the only thing that I’ve found that bugs me is that you have to scroll back to the top of the screen and click 2x (once in the menu and once on the type of subscription) to subscribe to a thread. There should be a single “generic subscribe” at the end of the threads.

[Rocky D]

This certainly is a puzzlement...where are the computer gurus, that are newby weldors...c'mon guys, I know you're out there!

[Silverback]

Well, Rocky, I am a “computer guy” but considering that I’m not seeing what he’s seeing, I know nothing about what he’s using (OS and browser), haven’t heard about any similar problems on any of the other boards that I hang out on that have upgraded or on the IT related lists that I’m on, and haven’t installed this version of the forums software on a server (vBulletin 3.0.3), I would have to just throw out wild guesses. A screen shot (to see what he’s seeing), some more information about the machine… and maybe I could get an idea, or at least get some idea where to look. The forum admin is probably in mostly the same boat, unless he happens to have a machine that is setup the same way as him and is looking at the problem right now.

I’d also be curious if he’s having the same problem with something like THIS , another board that just upgraded to the same version of the software.

If I was going to take a blind shot in the dark, I would guess that he’s running some old browser software that doesn’t understand some of the formatting that is being used in the CSS Stylesheet that the database is using to generate the page… (pretty likely if he's running win98 and hasn't downloaded updates in a while, if that's the case he's pretty much stuck until he does)

[Rocky D]

Clark put up a screen shot, and it looked to me the IE search sidebar was pushing the page over...history side bar will do that too....I hope that's all it is.