I'm building a grapple for the front end loader on my old Ford tractor; I seem to have spent half my days off over the past 20 years throwing tree branches onto a trailer and wrestling them off again and it has got real old. I have a row of cypress trees to remove and the thought of manhandling all the limbs and debris brought this project to the top of the list. I was going to buy a commercially made grapple but there are limited options here and they came in at almost $6000 which was out of the question.
I posted a question in the general section about laser profile cutting and was pointed in the right direction, thanks to all who offered advice and a huge thanks to Steve who converted my pencil drawings to CAD files with a lot of design development along the way. I emailed the files to Pro Tech Laser and picked this pile of 10 and 6mm grade 350 profiles up about four days later, along with a few lengths of 75 x 5 SHS and some sched 160 25nb tube ordered from a steel seller around the corner.
Attachment 390637
The finish on the laser cut profiles is very pleasing and the 0.3mm tolerance results in a very good fit to the SHS frame members
Attachment 390638
I've never used profile cutting before, seems like it's taking my fabricating to a whole different level. Going to make a start on the fabricating today and I'll update progress.