Die Horses: An In-depth Guide to Industrial Sawhorses for Heavy-Duty Support

Intro

– What do you do if you have something weighing several tons that needs an elevated surface to be worked on? You can’t exactly just pop it up on a workbench or a sawhorse. Or can you?

Specially engineered die horses are basically heavy-duty industrial steel sawhorses. Let’s find out more about them, the different engineering options for them, and what affects the cost.

What Is a Die Horse and What Are They Used For?

– I’m Dan Sherwood, Below-the-Hook Specialist with Mazzella Companies. A die horse is very similar to something in the industry and what everyone may know of as a sawhorse. It’s engineered to hold a capacity, usually metal, sometimes it can be aluminum, but it’s designed to be used as a stand to hold materials, it can be used in fabrication environments where there’s people working on beams that they need to span out. It can be used very heavily in the die industry when they’re working on repairing, making dies for any type of a die stamping situation.

There’s a lot of different applications that die horses or sawhorses or engineered material stands can be used for. People tend to refer to them as different things I’ve heard, you know, saw horses, engineered saw horses, material stands, engineered material stands. In our shop, we use these horses, mainly in our fabrication departments. We use them for helping us to span our overhead cranes, we use them when we’re building larger lifting beams, when we’re building stuff that’s too large for tables that we need to be able to support and get elevated, we’ll use 2, 3, 4, sometimes five of them positioned around to hold the product off the ground.

What Are the Benefits of Engineered Sawhorses?

There’s a lot of benefits to using the engineered saw horses. Number one, you know that they’re designed to hold the load you need them to hold so you’re not risking something happening where the sawhorse may fail and you lose your load that you’re working on. Our die horses, sawhorses are engineered to be worked underneath, so those hold a different safety factor to them to ensure that. They’re a great thing to help make your shop safer.

If you’re typically working on tables, you know, 4×8 tables or fab tables and you’re trying to build larger pieces on it, it’s going to help hold these pieces safer, steadier, more controlled. You’re going to have a lot more options of how you’re supporting these parts. It’s going to help keep things up and more at kind of a waist level. It’s going to be securely set on the ground and it’s going to be safe to be working on, under, around.

What Are the Customization Options for Industrial Sawhorses?

Workhorses have a lot of customization options. We can do collapsible caster wheels to them, which will allow the workhorse to move around freely when it’s not loaded and as soon as it gets loaded with like 300 pounds of weight, those casters collapse and now it’s resting on the floor. So it’s not going to go anywhere. We can do any type of protective top to it, wood, plastic, rubber, very customizable up there. We also offer D-rings on the sides of it for lifting it if you wanted to move them around your shop with the crane, instead of having the caster wheels on it. We can offer a vertical leg die horse for something that might be a tighter work area and we can offer narrower or wider tops to them.

What Are the Drawbacks to Engineered Support Stands?

Some of the drawbacks on the horses can be the taller you get, the bigger the A-frame span needs to be. So if you’re working on a smaller piece and you have to elevate it off the ground a little higher, you can get into a situation where you may be introducing some tripping hazards.

The part has to physically be resting on something, so if the part doesn’t have an area that you can support it by, that could become problematic or if you need to work on the part that is being supported under, you would have to reposition to get to that part.

What Are the Capacities for Industrial Sawhorses?

We’ve done workhorses that have been as little as 1,000 lbs. each, and we’ve gone all the way up to 100 ton per workhorse. There’s really no limit to the capacity we can go to on the workhorses.

The higher in the capacity we go, there might be minimum height requirements just based off of materials we need to use to be able to support that.

What Is the Price Range for an Engineered Die Horse?

You could see pricing range from, you know, maybe $2,000 for a very basic A-frame style die horse, on up to $8, $9, $10,000 if you get really crazy with all the customizations, massive capacity, and 7-foot, 8-foot span.

What Factors Affect the Cost of an Engineered Workhorse?

There’s a lot of factors that are going to affect the price of an engineered workhorse. Adding caster wheels to any die horse is going to significantly increase the price. The reason being they are especially designed caster wheel to collapse under such a small capacity of a load, but be able to hold the weight of the die horses and then additional labor involved and machine components involved to putting those casters on really add up pricing to it.

If you go with a very basic vertical leg simple die horse, it’s going to be relatively inexpensive, but the more bells and whistles you kind of add onto it, the higher that price is going to go. The span of the die horse or the length of the die horse is also going to be another contributing factor to how much a die horse is going to cost. The longer it is, the bigger the materials we have to use to be able to support that as well as when we start going up in height.

How Long Will an Engineered Workhorse Last?

They’re designed to last a long time. You might only buy one set of saw horses in your tenure with a company. Really the biggest issues around a saw horse would be if something’s dropped on it, that needs to be called out to be inspected immediately.

Typical wear and tear items on a saw horse might be after years. The springs and the casters might start to go bad and those need to be replaced. The wheels on a caster might need to be replaced if they’re moved around a ton. Custom tops on our workhorses are designed to withstand quite a bit. We use a hard oak for the wood and we’ll use like a UHMW-type plastic. Those hold up pretty well as long as nothing sharp is really digging into them. I’ve seen wood tops last 10+ years on workhorses and I’ve seen wood tops last a year on workhorses. It all kind of depends on the environment that it’s going into.

Replacement tops for our workhorses are very simple. All we’ll need is a serial number off the piece and what top material you want. If you had wood and you want to switch to a rubber or a plastic, you can do that as well.

Where Do You Get Specially Designed Engineered Workhorses?

There’s no requirement that’s out there that says you have to buy a workhorse from a manufactured type environment. Workhorses are able to be manufactured in-house as long as you are meeting and exceeding all ASME criteria, that you have qualified engineers designing them, as well as the certified welders welding them together.

You know, a company may say, oh well, my welders are certified. Well, the welders have to be certified to a certain weld procedure for that specific material or different types of materials that are being welded together, not just a general welding procedure. And that’s all per ASME.

Why Consider an Engineered Sawhorse Over an In-House Design?

So we follow all the ASME standards. We have all certified welders on staff, qualified to weld all different types of materials together. We have CWIs that inspect all welding once all that’s done. If a company can provide all of that, absolutely they can design and manufacture their own saw horses.

If you are manufacturing these on your own, you are taking full liability. Whereas if you purchase these from a manufacturer, they’re going to hold all the insurance, liability, backing. So, if you know, an accident does happen, you know, they will have your back on it and they have all the proper documentation they would need for an OSHA incident.

Mazzella is here to help you with any of your material handling needs, anything you need to get your jobs done and get your jobs done efficiently and safely. That’s what we’re here for.

How Can You Learn More About Die Horses?

– If you find yourself in need of an elevated platform to work on some seriously heavy stuff, then an industrial workhorse or sawhorse might be right for you. Contact Mazzella to get the custom solution you need as well as help with any of your material handling applications. Links below. If you found this video useful, informative, entertaining, or you just feel like being friendly, then hit that like button so we can get this information out to everyone who needs it. Subscribe and hit the bell so you never miss a video. If you have a question, drop it in the comments so we can get you an answer. My name is Ben, stay safe out there.