Gantry Crane hoist

The gantry crane has been such a huge help in the brewery, long before the AutoBrewer was even a thought.  It's used for Picking up the grain bag, effortlessly lifting and moving full kegs, and eliminating the need for pumps, and therefore the headache of maintaining and  cleaning them as well as eliminating the possibly getting infections from them.  Gravity does all the work.  Even if you don't care for the AutoBrewer, a hoist is a huge help.

Relay control for AutoBrewer

This section will detail how to re wire an electric hoist to work with a relay, while still working with it's controller.

First a brief explanation about how a hoist works. 

There are 4 wires in the cable going to a hoist controller, let's call them black, red, blue, and white.  In order for the hoist to go up, 2 sets of wires are shorted together simultaneously, and to go down, 2 other sets are shorted, for example

Up could be (black to red) and (blue to white)

While down could be (black to blue) and (red to white)

In this example what we want to do is connect the black and red wires to one relay, and the blue and white wires to a DIFFERENT relay, and activate those 2 relays on and off simultaneously to tell the lift to go up.

If your not familiar or comfortable working with receptacles and electrical parts now is the time to call someone who is.

We use the 440lb 120v hoist from harbor freight.  This hoist is a great fit for this task because the handle is large, and empty.  The capacitors are in the hoist housing.

We cut the receptacle used to control the lift directly into the handle for easy access. See (Fig 1.2)

If your capacitor are in your handle you need to do some solid investigating to be sure you are wiring the receptacle in the correct location in relation to the capacitors.  Basically you need to be sure the relays your adding short together the exactly same set of wires the factory switch is shorting.  You can do this by using a continuity meter, pressing the "up" button, and note which two sets of wires gain and lose continuity from the switch. 

We are going to use the example above, but yours may be different! This is just an example 

To go up the relays must short

Black to red

And 

Blue to white

First thing you do is UNPLUG YOUR HOIST!

Then break the tabs off your duplex receptacle so that the individual plugs are not electrically connected.

Next you need to get some slack on the wire, loosen the factory wire connector and pull about 8 inches of extra wire into the handle, cut the cord and strip it back so you have the individual colored wires. 

Strip all of the wires back and twist the similar colors back together. Now you can crimp staycons to this, or use small wirenuts and a pigtail as shown in (Fig 1.1) or wire these directly to the receptacle.

Cut the plastic out as shown in (Fig 1.2) and screw the receptacle in place.

Put your handle back together and your done.

You will need two lamp cords or similar, attach these cords to the two relays that are going to control your hoist, and simply plug them into your handle.

When the relays close they will act just like the factory switch and control the hoist to raise.

**EXTREMELY IMPORTANT** never control the hoist using the factory switch while the relays are plugged in, it could damage your hoist.  NEVER PLUG ANYTHING OTHER THAN THE RELAYS INTO THIS RECEPTACLE it does have voltage on it while the hoist is plugged in!

Now just mount the hoist high enough sand sturdy enough to lift the grain bag, and whatever else you may need lifted