Now that weather has been favorable (we need an indoor shop!) and work has kicked back in, we’ve been making lots of progress. The next component we needed to complete were the stabilizers or outriggers. We decided to go with a backhoe-style design for compactness, and the wider stance.
First step was to fabricate some brackets to weld to the frame. These were pretty simple, but did give me a chance to use the Bridgeport milling machine. After the brackets were rough cut with the plasma cutter, I cleaned them up on the mill and bored the 1″ holes for the pins.
After we tack welded those brackets on, we did a mock up with a 2×4 and the cylinder to determine clearances, length and the bracket location. A lot of this was ad-hoc experimentation which can work quite well for a one-off project like this.
After everything was figured out on the mock-up, we went ahead and cut the final legs, fabricated the lower brackets and tacked it all together for one final test fit. We connected a hose between the 2 ports on the cylinder so it could be extended and retracted without dumping fluid or introducing any contaminants.
The last steps were to attach some simple feet made of some scrap of well casing (unlike a backhoe, we’re just lifting straight up, so a smooth foot is better for that movement and reducing damage to the ground), complete the full welds all around, paint everything, and run the hoses to the existing valves on the hoist. After that we were able to test everything out and it all works well. This will provide much more stability and stiffness as well as being able to keep the hoist level on sloping ground.
We’re quite happy with how they turned out and work. This component is a significant one as it’s really the last major part to make the hoist complete. There are lots of additional bits we’ll be doing (wire reel, pipe racks, remotes), but with these outriggers, it’s really ready to work!