There are many types of lifting
devices that were explored in the research for this project. The Shaw Industries
plant in Bainbridge uses a lifting system that the group thought could be built
upon to meet the customer’s needs. Original designs that the group discussed
involved using the current design with additional legs incorporated for
increased lifting height. This, however, did not turn out be feasible and
additional modifications had to be made.
The second evolution of the design
had legs of 30 inches inclined at an angle of 45°.
This design ran into many problems dealing with the packaging of the legs
underneath the lifting pan when it folded down. The cross member that are used
for support would not allow for complete collapsing of the legs. This meant that
a new solution had to be found.
Figure 5:
Original Sketch
To answer this problem it was decided to move the pivot point higher up
on the links and increasing the angle of incline. The incline was changed to 60°
and this resulted in the link lengths being decreased to 23 inches. This managed
to solve the problems resulting form the space constraints. All of the inner
working parts have to be confined to and area of 17 inches by 30 inches. Now
they could be fully collapsed on top of each other without parts banging
together and overlapping each other.
