Roll-off shed rails suggestions

[ollypenrice]

9 hours ago, SteveBz said:

So what hope do any of us have?  I've just installed some M8 turnbuckles. Is it enough? Time will tell.

The brackets I used turned out to be real junk once broken so you could see inside them. An arm coming out of a flat flange was just fitted in and then spread out behind to keep it there, not welded at all. If you know the construction of the item you're using you'll be fine.

However, from your picture it looks to me as if you could have vertical panels fixed to the roof, running just below the corrugated top to down below the rail carriers then add a horizontal baton to the vertical panels on the inside to run below the rail carriers, which is how we've done it on all our sheds. You don't have to remember to chain anything down, it's got anti-lift in any position and it also seals out the weather very well.

Olly

 

[Xsubmariner]

 I used a roller gate motor kit that came with all the necessary toothed drive sections. Some minor alterations to the motor external fittings enabled me to mount the motor on the wall. As Olly said you need to mount the toothed rail sections to a solid rail, I didn’t think of using a piece of angle iron so welded some steel pieces to create a long steel rail which was mounted to the roof. The toothed rails that came with the motor kit were then fixed to the steel rail.  Two roller microswitches are used for roof fully open and closed stops. One can be seen to the left of the motor, the second is next to it.

To ensure the roof would never close until the mount and telescope were safely parked, I used the 12v motor inhibit circuit and fed a wiring loop to the mount which was only complete when 2 magnetic reed switches were closed. The reed switches were positioned on the mount such that they only closed when the mount parked. All in the total cost of materials was about £150. The motor kit also comes with 2 remote controllers.

 

[SteveBz]

14 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

The brackets I used turned out to be real junk once broken so you could see inside them. An arm coming out of a flat flange was just fitted in and then spread out behind to keep it there, not welded at all. If you know the construction of the item you're using you'll be fine.

However, from your picture it looks to me as if you could have vertical panels fixed to the roof, running just below the corrugated top to down below the rail carriers then add a horizontal baton to the vertical panels on the inside to run below the rail carriers, which is how we've done it on all our sheds. You don't have to remember to chain anything down, it's got anti-lift in any position and it also seals out the weather very well.

Olly

 

Eventually I'll use some version of this. Now I feel the priority is to get running with version 1.0 and manual locks.

[SteveBz]

So now we have a minimum viable product, here:

 

There's a slight bounce on the close function, which I'm working on, but basically it more-or-less works.

Here is the unit.  Does anyone recognise it.  I'm trying to find the user manual to set the stop limits properly.

Now to think about a few bit to add to stop it flying off in a storm. 😅

Kind regards

Steve.