Pallet dismantler

A buddy of mine decided to go into the pallet repair business. Pallets? There's money in those?
Yep. About five bucks apiece. He figured he could do a hundred a day, if he had a "Dismantler".
I had no idea a pallet could be dismantled. Smashed into bits, sure, but taken apart in a controlled manner? Hmmmm......

Ol' buddy described as best he could how this thing was supposed to work. He'd seen one in action. He wanted one that would do a pallet four feet wide, where the usual pallet is something like three. The outfit that made the dismantler wanted some serious cash to make a special wide one. Ol' Buddy had some extra beer money, and could make the prettiest welds I've ever seen.

So there's the constraints for this project: It has to be more than four feet wide, it has to be built with a welder and a cutting torch. And it has to be cheap. Oh, and it's got to be stout. If you've ever tried to pry a pallet apart, you know they only LOOK flimsy.

I sat and thought, played with the CAD machine, thought some more, poked at the calculator, and drew up:

I made up a complete bill of materials, with complete specs on all the store-bought stuff like cylinders and bearings including part numbers, so Ol' Buddy could just walk into the supply house with the list and a wad of money. He got all the stuff, put it together, and it worked first time. He's so happy that he's now dreaming up all kinds of labor-saving devices for me to design. He and I need to have a little talk about that beer money......

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