Platform lift, pit maintenance area.

Lift model, A6 Supreme, Indirect Hydraulic platform lift with 2.1 piston, installed at Mamas and Papas store, Nottingham.

As part of our ongoing news, I thought it may be of interest to show some of the main components of a hydraulic platform lift and explain the purpose of them in regard to the pit area.

Fig 1.1

Fig 1.1 Shows the view of the lift shaft with the car away from the ground. Here are some of the key safety features that enable maintenance work to be carried out on the lift safely. The pit stop switch and the pit prop should always be deployed when entering this area, the purpose of the shaft lighting is to allow personnel to make any inspection to the platform lift workings.

The safety gear test arm is a special lever that can be pulled from outside the lift shaft, this will test that the lift will stop if anything un-toward should occur with the steel ropes. As with most passenger lifts that are hydraulic the system is 2:1 e.g for every 100mm the piston travel the lift car will travel 200mm. This allows the piston to be shorter in length. The rope attachment seen in Fig 1.1, is spring loaded to allow adjustment of rope tension to be even throughout the 4 ropes.

Next week we will look at the passenger lift car and its components.