By signcraft
Posted on Wednesday, June 27th, 2018
There’s nothing easy or fun about lugging 4×8 sheets of sign materials around the shop. The heavier the substrate (and the older you get), the harder it gets. A 4×8 sheet of 1-in. PVC weighs about 120 lbs. If you work alone, moving that is a hassle and a great way to hurt your back. If you have help, you still have to interrupt them to get them to help you.
Larry Elliott, Elliott Design, built this rolling cart to help him move heavy sheet goods around the shop and load them onto his CNC router and worktables.
“I had seen one online,” Larry says, “but it wasn’t adjustable and didn’t match the heights I needed. So I built mine to accommodate the two equipment heights that I used the most: the table saw and the CNC router. When not needed to move materials, the cart makes for a great two-level rolling work table by laying a piece of plywood on as a temporary top.”
With the cart, Larry can single-handedly flip a 120-lb. sheet of 1-in. PVC from vertical to horizontal—then feed it onto his router bed or saw table.
The cart has castors on two sides, and one side is angled so that the sheet can rest there while rolled along. The notched and rounded corners make it easy to flip the table. With one foot on the bottom bar, one hand on the top bar and the other hand on the top edge of the material, you can flip those heavy sheets effortlessly. The rounded corner touches the floor as soon as you start to flip the table.
“It’s very easy to roll the cart over to my substrate racks where the sheet stock is stored standing on edge, slide out a piece, then sit it on the fold-out stubs on the cart. I roll it into the production room and flip it up horizontal, then roll it to the CNC router and slide it off at the same height as the router bed.”
Click here to download Larry’s drawings of the cart and build your own this week. You can cut the end panels out of one sheet of ¾-in. plywood, and that leaves enough material for a temporary table top, too. You’ll also need six 2x4x8s and eight 2-in. castors. Adding two conveyor rollers will let you roll the sheets off easily once they have been flipped from vertical to horizontal.
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