Have a standard self-assembled MR1. If I were to move it 1000 miles, does anyone have any recommendations for best practice?
I could hire a shipping company, but I’m worried they won’t know what to do with it either since it’s not exactly standard.
So far my best idea is to build a solid wooden base on leveling feet that I put under the machine, and then raise it up. The wooden base will need to be ready for a pallet jack to get it onto a truck with a life gate.
I’ve also see people move it with a harbor freight hydraulic cart, but I’m worried about trusting the hydraulics unattended in a truck for that kind of time (plus the cart has wheels).
Given the relatively small size of the legs, I’m worried about the lateral inertia loads of the concrete during the trip.
If I were doing this on a stock MR-1, I would build an elevated mount that distributes the load across the bottom of the concrete base. Ie a table slightly taller than the legs. Id strap the machine to that very securely (maybe even drill and insert glued in concrete anchors from the bottom). I’d also put the whole table on some pneumatic vibration isolation mounts.
Reach out to Langmuir and see if you can purchase the brackets they use for shipping complete assembled MR-1. Those will triangulate the legs and give a lifting point for a fork lift and also be used to strap it down inside the trailer.
If it helps, here is how my pre-assembled MR1 showed up to my house. Brackets for forks, cross straps for legs, and then ratchet strapped down to a heavy duty pallet.
