Aluminum Gate Installation

[Don52]

Last fall I prepared detailed drawings for the driveway gate for my friend Scott, who is an engineer that I work with. Scott had previously designed the piers and arranged their construction. The piers are actually an armature of stainless steel, which goes about five feet deep into a footing. The bricks of the pier rest on the footing and are built up around the armature. The first picture shows my SolidWorks design of the gate assembly.

1. Gate Assembly

The second picture shows the gate leaf components.

2. Gate leaf asm


The third picture shows the weld callouts for the gate leaf. The gate consists of 2" x 4" Aluminum tubing as well as three solid bocks that have tapped holes in them. The curved tube is bent the hard way and we couldn't find anyone willing and able to bend the tube in the Detroit area, so we had a company in Chicago bend it for us. I sent the design out to one of my company's local fabrication venders for welding, because I was concerned that the job was a little big for me and that my Dynasty 200 DX welder wouldn't have enough power to weld the heavy blocks, even with a Helium Argon mix.

3. Gate leaf weld callouts


I chose to use spherical bearings for the hinge bearings so that the bearings wouldn't fight each other if the pintles weren't perfectly aligned. I used a thrust bearing that had a concave recess that matched the diameter of the ball, so the thrust bearing would also accommodate misalignment.

4. Spherical bearing and thrust washer


The pintles are 1" stainless steel with 1"-8 UNC threads on them. My design called for the pintles to be reverse bored as shown below to add a proper finish and to make the bearings fit in the blocks that had to mount to the 4" wide tubing.

5. Spherical and thrust bearing

[Don52]

The next step was to do a dry run with all of the details to insure that we had all of the proper hardware and everything fit.

6. Checking fit and our measurements


The first thing that we found is that the pintles bottomed out by hitting concrete before they were in the correct position, so I brought the pintles home and cut 1" off the end.

7. Cutting down the pintles


8. Pintles cut down


This is a welding forum, so here are three pictures that the fabrication vender sent to me.

9. Gate leaf weld


10. Leaf welded

[Don52]

11. Gate leaf welded


I found that the pivot pin of the gate actuator wouldn't fit in the bore of the gate bracket because of the powder coat, so I brought home the gate brackets and reamed them with an adjustable reamer.

12. Reaming off powder coat from bore


13. Testing pivot pin in reamed hole


14. Reamer has just paint on it no Aluminum


The pier bracket had to be welded by me in the field and there was only 8" between the bracket and the ground, so I decided to chamfer the top so that I could weld it with two passes from the top instead of all the way around as specified. I also have only limited experience welding overhead with a mirror.

15. Chamfered pier bracket

[Don52]

Last Saturday we installed the gate. Here is a close up picture of the hinge block and the pintle. After some experimenting we found that it was easiest to mount the top block to the gate leaf, then hang the gate and then slide the lower bearing block onto the lower pintle and finally mount the lower bearing block to the gate.

16. Upper bearing block mounted on pintle


Here is a picture of the gate bracket bolted to the gate.

17. Gate bracket mounted


Here is a close up of my two pass stainless steel TIG weld, which attaches the pier bracket to the plate in the pier.

19. Pier bracket welded to plate in pier


The following picture shows the linear actuator temporarily mounted to the newly welded pier bracket.

20. Linear actuator mounted

[Don52]

Here is a picture of the mounted closed gate from the street.

21. Gate closed


Last but not least here is a picture of the opened gate, looking towards the street.

22. Gate opened


-Don

[psacustomcreations]

Very nicely documented and great work again. Please keep on posting your work.

[Capt B]

Great looking gates. Nice work!

[leightrepairs]

Very nice, looks well designed and executed.

[tapwelder]

wonderful

[Mikel_24]

Great step by step post! I love it!

[MinnesotaDave]

Really great attention to detail - nicely done

...house is gorgeous!!

[Brett]

Lovely gates Don
Just a Q.
When doing larger gates like yours , we would normally have the pivots into top and bottom of the gate .
Why did you opt to go with off set face fixed pivots ?
Brett

[Don52]

Lovely gates Don
Just a Q.
When doing larger gates like yours , we would normally have the pivots into top and bottom of the gate .
Why did you opt to go with off set face fixed pivots ?
Brett

The reason for the offset bearing blocks is to eliminate the pinch point that typically occurs when the hinges are on the edge of the gate. The city that Scott lives in is very fussy about the design of gates and have extensive codes that the gate needs to meet. Attached are two pictures of the last gate that I worked on. You can see that as the gate is opened the vertical edge of the gate will get closer to the pier creating a pinch point. In this case the pier is a 6x6 post. In the case of Scott's gate the pier is wider so it would be a tighter pinch point.

1. Whole gate asm


2. Close up of hinge

[Brett]

I see,
Cheers mate
Brett