Moving a Prototrak mill under a garage door opening

[kentucker237]

The move went extremely well. The sun even came out, as you can see from the pictures. Total time to move was 1 hour and 6 minutes. The mill was shipped on an enormous skid. I’ll probably make benches out of the wood.

Getting it under the 7 foot garage door opening was no problem at all. There are 4 screws that retain the column cover. Removing the cover exposes the chain and sprockets for the counterweight. Once the cover is removed, the top of the chain is at about 6 foot, 9 inches. We also tilted the head over about 60 degrees. The forklift driver had no problem getting it through the opening.

Once in the garage, it was easily maneuvered on their skates. Having a smooth, level garage floor helped. I thought about putting the mill in the corner at 45 degrees, but decided to go with the square placement shown.

So if you have a conventional 7 foot garage opening, a Trak will fit easily. Something to keep in mind if you are moving one, is to support the counterweight so it doesn’t bang around. There is a hole in the side of the column that accepts 1 inch diameter round stock, about 24 inches long. About the only difficulty that we found was moving the head to lift the counterweight off of the support bar. The top of the ball screw has a small round nut (about 1 inch diameter) that requires a hook spanner to turn it. I didn’t have a spanner small enough, so we just muscled it.

All in all, I’m pleased with having hired a professional rigging company to do the move. The rental cost for a forklift big enough to move this mill on the skid wasn’t a whole lot less than the cost of the move. And of course, I don’t know where to find skates like they have.