Boom arm deluxe

S

sgryd

Member
Joined
May 14, 2007
Messages
362
Hi all.
I hope you have had a great Christmas.

I've been building on my boom arm. I thought I'd post some about the project when it's finished. But it never seems to get finished, so I'm posting some about the unfinished project.

I have the regular Festool Boom arm, but it never worked for me. I wanted the following:
1. No vertical tube as in the original solution. It's always in the way in my small shop
2. Vacuum on the attic on top of my shop
3. Good arm reach so I can use it all over the shop (yes it's a really small shop)
4. Something to put the TS55 on when rearranging the guide rail. The saw is always in the way when I put it on the work piece.
5. Good work light
6. Compressed air in the boom arm
7. Possibility to have two hoses attached. 27mm for sanding and 36mm for routing and sawing

I'm almost there..

At first I made a prototype to try out the right reach of the arm
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Tried out the arm with the vacuum attached (will be moved to the attic later)
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Mounting the boom arm took some thinking and welding
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The "head" of the boom arm. Here seen with the light and one of the side panes.
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Back side of the front plate.
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Head mounted on the boom arm (trial)
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Routing the side panes was easy with the curve template.
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After routing a template in MDF it was easy to copy the profile in birch
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Making a template for shaving of some of the plastic of the outlet. It got a little tighter than I thought.
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Shaving the outlet
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Outlet fitted in place
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Picture from above without lid
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The compressed air took some practice to get in place. I'm not a plumber, but I managed to get it air tight at the third try :)
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Drawing for the "hovering" tool platform. Drawn in cad and printed with Matthias Wandel's Bigprint
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Routing the template in MDF
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More routing
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To route round I first cut a round plate with a hole saw. I then screwed the round plate on my template.
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Tried out the template on another piece of MDF.
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Tried out the concept.
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That's it for now. Some day I will finish the project ;)

//Michael
 
Nice Job. Very professional look to it!

Wouldn't it be cool if Festool offered a 2-port selector/blast gate?!
 
Yes, that would be cool. Y-connector and two separate blast gates does the job though. The blast gates, BTW, is for the Festool vacuums with autoclean. It's suposed to sit directly on the vacuum. When you close the gate I think the vacuum is supposed to clean itself.
 
Wow! Nice work.

Wonder if I could get something like that to extend out of the back of my van [eek].....hmmmmm
 
That's a beautiful boom arm!!!

However, I am rather concerned about the "area moment of inertia" you are placing on what appears to be a wood-frame wall. If you didn't do sufficient engineering behind the mounting of your boom arm, you could lose the whole building.

Even though I am an engineer myself, before I mounted my ASA5000 boom arm in my shop, I consulted with my nephew who is a civil engineer for confirmation of the loads I would be placing on the structure and the fasteners used to hold it in place. Those numbers were scary-big, and I suspect yours will be in the same ballpark.

I don't want to hijack your thread, so I will only post 1 picture. It shows the Festool bracket and the custom bracket I had made and used for calculating the loads. Notice how the upper 4 bolt holes are the farthest away from the arm's pivot. Yours is the reverse, and your upper 2 bolts are closest to the pivot and the lower 3 are farthest. Those lower 3 bolts are the least important of all, because they are in compression. It is the upper bolts that are critical, and the farther away you can get them from your moment, the less tension they will have on them.

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It also appears as though you mounted this boom arm after the structure was finished. Did you pre-plan the structure itself to accommodate the moment you would be placing on this wall? If you simply used lag screws into wood framing, you will be at risk for these pulling free. You may also be at risk for the framing members themselves of being ripped out of the structure. Mine was mounted to a reinforced concrete wall that actually supports two vehicles parked in my garage above it.
 
Thank you for your concerns. I haven't done any calculations, maybe I should.

But I have built the whole building myself. I have pictures of the studs from before putting up the plaster boards. The funny shape of the back plate is because I wanted the screws into the studs. The screws (5 of them) are 140 mm long, reaching deep into the 45x145mm studs. The frame of the house consists of 45x145mm studs at cc 600mm. On top of the studs there is usually a horizontal stud. I have two horisintal studs, i.e. 2x45x145mm. My wife is a civil engineer in construction. She always say that I overdimension things. I tend to agree sometimes..

My arm will always be angled (there is no room to straighten it out) so the mounting will want to rotate to the right as well as pivoting out. The rotation force is why I welded the "wing" on the mounting plate. I have also hung my whole body weight (75 kg) at the tip of the arm as a test. No problems whatsoever.
 
sgryd said:
Thank you for your concerns. I haven't done any calculations, maybe I should.

But I have built the whole building myself. I have pictures of the studs from before putting up the plaster boards. The funny shape of the back plate is because I wanted the screws into the studs. The screws (5 of them) are 140 mm long, reaching deep into the 45x145mm studs. The frame of the house consists of 45x145mm studs at cc 600mm. On top of the studs there is usually a horizontal stud. I have two horisintal studs, i.e. 2x45x145mm. My wife is a civil engineer in construction. She always say that I overdimension things. I tend to agree sometimes..

My arm will always be angled (there is no room to straighten it out) so the mounting will want to rotate to the right as well as pivoting out. The rotation force is why I welded the "wing" on the mounting plate. I have also hung my whole body weight (75 kg) at the tip of the arm as a test. No problems whatsoever.
Click to expand...

If your wife is a civil engineer, then I won't worry about this quite as much. I would feel a lot better if the upper 2 mounts were through-bolts instead of 140mm screws (lag screws, as we call them here). I would also prefer to see your vertical studs tied into the horizontal stud (we call a top plate here) with either brackets or lag screws in-shear. If you have pictures of the wall from when you built it, that would also help.

Did you convey my concerns to your wife? She may not have thought about the "area moment of inertia" when you started the project.
 
Thanks, I'll look into it some more and talk to my wife.

The vertical studs are fastened with brackets to the lower top plate. The top plates are nailed together with nail gun and the nails are angled in different directions. It this particular area there are studs around the window as well. These studs are fastened with brackets to the vertical studs as well.
 
i know i asked thise before but i cant find the thread.
sorry
where did you  get that boom arm.
 
Alan m said:
i know i asked thise before but i cant find the thread.
sorry
where did you  get that boom arm.
Click to expand...

If you are referring to my boom arm, the discussion is called Something Wicked This Way Comes. I never finished the details of the thread because there didn't appear to be much interest in it at the time. It is a long story, but the boom arm was given to me by Festool USA.
 
Rick Christopherson said:
Alan m said:
i know i asked thise before but i cant find the thread.
sorry
where did you  get that boom arm.
Click to expand...

If you are referring to my boom arm, the discussion is called Something Wicked This Way Comes. I never finished the details of the thread because there didn't appear to be much interest in it at the time. It is a long story, but the boom arm was given to me by Festool USA.
Click to expand...
i was talking about sgryd s one
rick
i read your story over on talk f
its a great tool but very expensive. 1800 euro  at least.
the one in the OP post looks more basic and cheaper.
 
Rick, you had me worried. But I'm more calm now.

The plate (white) that the arm is mounted on will not bend (15mm steel). So the pivot point for the whole package would be at the lower end of the white plate. If the whole arm weighs 60 kg and it's centre of mass is 1,3 meters out on the arm the screws above the arm would need to hold about 2 kN together. I do think 60kg is way more than the actual weight.

The screws will hold (20+8d)x(l-d) Newton of pulling force. d = 12mm. l = 80mm (threads in wood). This gives about 8kN for each screw. I.e it seems to be quite safe. I'll check the numbers with someone who knows this better than me.

edit:
The ASA 5000 is quite some piece of arm. It's 5 meters fully extended! I don't have room to extend my arm perpendicular to the mounting, but it reaches 2 meters at about 45 degrees from the mounting. With more than double the length your arm will need stronger mounting than mine.

Alan, the arm is from here: http://www.plymex.se/english-affischsida/
 
thanks sgryd .  unfortunitly there is no one close selling them.
my converter is working out about (3400 krona) at about 400 euro.
is that right
 
sgryd,

The boom arm looks great, lots of thoughtful design went into it. It looks like you are in a pretty small shop (as am I) and I can see how much easier it would be to work there always having power/vacuum/etc overhead. Great job!

As a side note, can you advise where you got the curve templates? They look really handy to have.

Thanks,

RMW
 
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