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DIY Home Gym Adjustable Pulley Cable Machine Build Log
Part 1 of 4 – Material Prep and Beginning Fabrication

Here’s a video log of how I built my own adjustable cable machine for my home gym. These are widely available online but I couldn’t find the one for me:

- Very expensive – £475 was the cheapest retail machine I could find with a rotating and height adjustable pulley.
- Size – You’ll see in the video that my home gym is not the biggest! All of the retail machines I found we’re totally floor standing and as such had large footprints to prevent them from tipping over. They would’ve taken up far too much space in my gym.
- Capacity – All the adjustable retail units that I could find used weight stacks and the cheapest maxed out at around 70KG which is fine for most exercises but could easily be exceeded for lat work and there didn’t seem to be any way to increase the maximum weight capacity.

My design uses 1″ bars to hold the weights so it can take standard home gym weight plates which you’ve probably already got and can be bought for next to nothing on ebay. As such it also has finer increments for weight adjustments which make it ideal for light weight rehab work.

I’d like others to have a go at building one of these (or two for a crossover!) for their own home gyms. I had intended for the videos to be a full tutorial for anyone to have a go but realistically I think a maker would need to have some basic/intermediate DIY/fabrication experience, as although I’ve made sure to include all of the important steps, I can’t possibly cover 100%. Also, for the significant cost savings to be viable, you’d need to already have a well stocked set of tools as you see me use in the video. That being said, I would invite anyone to give it a go!

My design DWG file and a PDF print are available through the below link:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/3rymtpe1svan1mt/Cable%20Machine.zip?dl=0

The PDF is intended as an overview only. If you’re going to build this then you will need to use the DWG file so you can take precise measurements and prints as and when you need them throughout the build. If you don’t have AutoCAD to view the file then you can download TrueView for free from the AutoDesk website which will let you measure and print as needed.

Basic Materials List:

40x40x2mm Mild steel welded box section for the main frame
50x50x2mm Mild steel welded box section for the weight plate mount and pulley mount
3mm Thick mild steel sheet for the base and all other plate pieces you see
1″ 14AWG Mild steel tube for the weight plates
M10 Part-threaded bolts, nuts, washers, rod etc
Steel sleeves, M10 internal, 15mm external
95mm Pulleys, M10 hole. Pack of 10 from Ebay Hong Kong seller
Plastic coated wire rope, 5mm overall diameter
8mm detent pin to secure the pulley assembly to its various heights on the frame
Split pins to secure the pulley assembly hinge pin
5mm Wire rope clamps and carabiner
40mmx40mm Box section plastic end caps
2mm Plastic sheet to sleeve the weight and pulley assemblies
Etch primer and gloss black top coat (approx 800ml of each)
4mm Thick mild steel spacer washers used to space pulleys from the frame according to the designs

With the exception of the main steel order, all other parts were from ebay.

Total material cost £196.92

I’ll provide more details on all of the above if needed.