Platform Crane B Kit Launch

Off Model Kits, Plywood, SandboxRanch.com,

I designed the platform crane B kit about 15 years ago (yes, this surprises me too!) and what you see in today’s video is actually one I laser cut and built when I first started CNCROi.com as a business and it’s been a great dust collector ever since in my shop, but by happenstance, my son Simon came to the shop and gravitated to it immediately and has been playing with this crane daily for months so I figure it’s time to launch it on SandboxRanch.com as well!

I’m entirely self-taught, animation to design, and if you want to get an idea of how I cut my teeth in the custom world, at first virtually for many years before migrating to the physical world, check out my site CNCKing.com – lots of great stuff there that will eventually, one day, slowly, work its way to SandboxRanch.com as kits.

The material I used for this platform crane B kit was quarter inch plywood, nothing special grade wise but as mentioned in the video, plywood is never the thickness you buy it at, it can grown and shrink on you, as such, the scale of the finished model is based on the thickness of the material, so the completed and assembled model would be bigger or smaller by the same proportion.

Laser cutting plywood in this case, was done with a mask on the front and back, as such, smoke was contained only to the edges of the model where it was cut, making the surface of the platform crane B kit plywood free from contaminants.

Each part interlocks into the other, you can really see this directly with the legs of the platform crane B kit in the top picture, the top and bottom parts are distinct, as such, assembly is relatively straight forward for this SandboxRanch.com model when it comes to building it yourself.

This platform crane B kit model actually when through quite a few permutations before settling on this final design, it was actually among the first designs I made as it used round wooden dowels to start with, which I later fixed as this was a BAD design decision (they are NEVER the correct diameter nor easy to fix).

Once fixed-up, I cut it out many years later with my Shopbot Desktop CNC router… that’s how I learned to bring my virtual models into the real world after years of designing on my computer exclusively!

As computers got better, I decided to also improve the assembly graphics so people could get an idea of how it was built without needing extensive instructions, though, those are also provided.

I then started to differentiate model “streams” from laser cut to router cut, they are essentially the same design, but a few extra programming “helps” built-into the model that CNC routers need that CNC lasers don’t.

And there you have it, this is the journey that this platform crane B kit has taken through the years!

When I was designing all these kids toys, I never imagined that one day my own son would be enjoying my passion for these, he’s got a growing collection of wooden toys that he enjoys, I’d say, being rather biased, far more than his plastic or store bought versions.

Laser cutting plywood is pretty straight forward, there are a lot of things I could have done to greatly complicate this model but experience has taught me to keep the piece count low and as streamlined as possible, with parts being as obvious as possible when it comes to making kits for now SandboxRanch.com.

Now that this platform crane B kit is cut, you can see how my design approach, which is still very much valid almost 20 years later, is still very much a good one when it comes to making these kids toys that I put so many hours into putting together and now make available on SandboxRanch.com.

Of course, the nesting for this platform crane B kit is absolutely horrible, I have learned A LOT since cutting this years ago but for demonstrative purposes, each part can be clearly seen, quite a contrast to how you see things being cut now!

I still very much enjoy cutting these models, although I’ve routered and laser cut this model multiple times through the years, it’s always fun to revisit my beginnings into the custom fabrication world.

The reason why you don’t see any wood grain on these platform crane B kit pieces is the masking, that now needs to be removed on the front and back of each piece, something that would actually be done by YOU when you get this kit, if you opted for this option when you bought this kit from SandboxRanch.com.

After removing the masking on both sides, it’s time to get way too many clamps and glue and stick the entire model kit together, it takes a day to let everything dry and another day for the final glue-up to work.

I hope you appreciate the time put into making such a complex model with many axis of rotation and movement using so few plywood pieces once you get to this stage of the build process of this platform crane B kit.

I couldn’t think of a way of interlocking the spinning top and bottom together without causing more issues than it solves but for my son Simon, he doesn’t seem to care, this works fine for him and rarely does it come apart, the glue makes a massive difference when it comes to stability and keeping things tight enough to not fall apart once just friction fit together.

There really is no way around clamps in a shop, or when making kits like this, and the more parts you have, the more steps are involved with glue to final fit and functionality of the SandboxRanch.com model.

From experience, I’ve learned to use far too many clamps than necessary, things like to move while the glue dries, and using too many clamps when building a model with so many interlocking parts makes sure that these drying movements occur as little as possible.

Once the platform crane B kit was all dry and ready to go, you can see a little more glue was needed to keep the gantry in place and to make sure the string didn’t get loose, when I re-strung this for Simon, I actually just drilled a hole and strung it that way through the gantry rather than on top of it, it worked better with his busywork flow.