Tormach PCNC 770
My friend Shrey introduced me to one of his close friends who is also a fellow Tormach enthusiast at the 2022 Philadelphia Maker Faire. As luck would have it, this past spring he informed me his friend was moving and was interested in selling his Tormach PCNC 770. After a very brief negotiation period I decided this was an offer I couldn’t refuse on a pristine Tormach PCNC 770. Who doesn’t love 10,000 RPMs of CNC awesomeness!
PCNC 770 moving and rigging Adventures
Why hire professional movers when you can create your own adventures? They say there is no such thing as a free lunch and I should have realized this fact when we discovered this move would require rigging the 770lb CNC and 400lb base out of a basement through a challengingly small basement portal door and down several sets of concrete yard steps to the street in Philadelphia. This evolution turned out to be much more challenging and labor intensive than I could ever have imagined.
It’s one thing to watch rigging, it’s a whole another experience thing to be the one doing it.
This endeavor was going to require an engine hoist, a truck with a lift gate and sweat, … lots and lots of sweat!
Harbor Freight 2 Ton Engine Hoist
If there is a convenient place to rent an engine hoist I could not find it. I did see that sunbelt had rentals but none nearby that could be a pragmatic solution. A quick scan of internet forums suggests these are frequently purchased and resold on Craigslist or other online forums. I decided to acquire a 2 Ton foldable engine hoist at that bastion of DIY’ers – Harbor Freight. Coming in around $300 and change it was a good deal. I also added a hand winch, a shackle, a six foot piece of webbing and thirty foot piece of heavy duty recovery strap. This 2 two ton engine hoist is a beauty, works smoothly and handles remarkably.
I determined that to make this move a success a truck with a lift gate would be critical so we could use a pallet jack to load the gear on the lift gate. I struggled to find a convenient place to rent a truck with a lift gate. After some hunting we found a local place did have trucks with lift gates at a reasonable price.
The Hobby CNC
The biggest limiting factor for this move was the small portal door in the basement. We broke the machine all the way down into several smaller pieces. We first removed the enclosure and then lifted the machine off the base using the manufacturers lift kit. Next we removed the Z axis head from the machine. Lastly we removed the cabinet and the Z axis from the base table. This evolution took a whole day and we were only 80% complete.
Appliance Dolly Saves the Day!
The appliance dolly I rented turned out to be a critical piece of equipment for the move. The appliance dolly enabled us to strap pieces to the dolly and then carefully lower the equipment down several successive flights of stairs. It wasn’t elegant or pretty but it worked. For some of the heavy lifts we had my son hold the recovery strap webbing at the top of the steps to help slow the descent in a more controlled manner.
This move took the entire day and we ran out of time that eve to get the X axis and the table bed moves completed. (Shoutout to Shrey who was helping us move and made a good call as a voice of reason to stop for the night before anyone got injured trying to lug the final pieces out of the basement.) We had to return a second time to get the final pieces of equipment that had been moved to a local storage unit to coincide with a house sale. We also picked up tooling that came with the sale and a few other remaining Knock-Knacks such as the monitor and keyboard base. This final evolution went smoothly. We loaded all the remaining gear into the quintessential emblem of suburban parenthood – our white Honda minivan.
Hobby CNC Moving Lessons Learned
- Rent a truck with a lift gate.
- Just buy the 2 ton Harbor Freight engine hoist. You are going to need it if you are breaking the machine down into smaller segments.
- Appliance dollies are a great option for stairs. You can rent these from most places. We used this item extensively during the move in multiple configurations.
- Renting a pallet jack from a local big box store is a tremendous help especially when combined with a truck with a lift gate
- 2 sets of webbing slings and a large shackle will come in handy when combined with the engine hoist