KF CRANE is a material handling Equipment Company that sells many types of hoistâs and cranes for certain applications. Looking through their list of portable hoists, a 2 ton has a cost
around $2500 for a non-adjusting height crane and would have an equivalent rating to the one
being designed. These hoists come with casters but the trolley and chain hoist must be purchased separately. Below is an example of a basic portable gantry hoist design.
This design is relatively easy to assemble while it is lying down but would most likely require two people to stand up. Using two people to stand up the hoist after assembly seems to be an
unavoidable factor in the design. The Cal Poly Rose Float club has a gantry hoist (3 ton Capacity) which was quickly examined to get a different idea of how the column and frame could be designed.
After looking at the frame it was easy to see that the legs were designed poorly; they were built with 3âX6âX3/16â rectangular tube which is strong but the âAâ frame design means
the legs will start deflect due to the resolving bending moment and the rectangular tube was oriented to bend about its weaker axis seen in Figure