i visuallise a lift as a cage; a motor; a cable and a switch. why do they get stuck?
why do they get stuck in between floors?
do you try to exit lifts stuck between floors? or do you fear decapitation/amputation from a sudden motion of the lift?
thanks. k
Lift have a built in safty mechanism such that if the cable breaks (ie the lift freefalls, an automatic break is applied. (basically the tension in the cable stops some 'rods' from sticking into a 'grid' in the shaft wall..))
Best to wait to be rescued methinks!!
Usually because one of the safety detectors triggers.
Reminds me of that wonderful lift shaft scene in The Omen II
Most lifts have a steel cable from the car to the top of the liftshaft where it has multiple turns around a pulley on the motor shaft and then is connect to the counterweight running in the shaft next to (and in the opposite direction to) the lift car (yes I had a look in that room that says "danger - do not enter"). Lift problems are often about the large number of safety interlocks, and I'd expect one on the escape door on the roof of the lift car too.
Known (at least in mining circles) as a "keps" (probably a corruption of "keeps"), and usually operated by a centrifugal gizmo.
Yes thats correct, I actually was thinking of some sort of cantilever system, where the tension in the cantilevers pulled the rods back (like the tension in a pulled longbow makes it shorter), However I was just thinking that if the bow 'broke' you might be in serious trouble!! At least that is what I recall seeing on some television program about the first lift, where the inventor convinced people of its safety by being in the lift when the rope was cut!!!
What you are perhaps describbing is perhaps more similar to this ?
I prefer the one in Dark Star!
Yep -- one of these in the Empire State Building got exercised back in 1995 with a lift car full of Japanese tourists, only about 3 days after I travelled in it. Reports at the time said it slipped a couple of floors before jamming.
Many fail due to the power tripping for a multitute of reasons - but most places call out the lift engineer to re-set it. Been waiting for 2 weeks at my place of work - it hasn't worked since the power was off for some other work. I guess it will be a simple reset that is required.
Motorised lifts are much like that, except they usually have multiple cables and a counterweight. There are also lots of switches, mainly to do with safety. Hydraulic lifts usually have a big hydraulic cylinder up the back of the shaft, with the cables running over a pulleys on the top, attached to the lift at one end and to something solid at the other. Hydraulic lifts are better at getting the floor of the lift level with the floor outside, so are often used where most traffic is wheeled - hospital lifts and freight lifts, for example.
Usually because one of the safety switches trips.
The escape hatch is in the roof, so decapitation is not usually likely. However, the right procedure is to press the alarm button and wait.
Colin Bignell
" snipped-for-privacy@gglz.com" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:
Lift problems are often about the
Do escape doors on the top of lift cars exist outside Hollywood?
I've never seen one, I can't imagine what good one would be - what to you do now you're standing among the cables and pulleys?
The nearest I've seen is on the London Underground, so long ago they're probably replaced, where lifts could be placed side by side in the shaft and passengers transferred, but this was all under manual control by staff.
mike
Maybe they're also for maintenance.
The firemen could get you out with a couple of ladders to the floor above.
There used to one in the lift when I went to UNI. It was a 9 floor building, at lunchtimes and at the end of the day there used to be long queues for the lift at every floor, the car which was already full used to stop and open it's doors at every floor. Merely tripping the microswitch on the hatch caused the car to stop and the controller to do a reset thereby "forgetting" all the pending stops. :-))
Yes, but, as they are for rescuers to get to people in the lift, they often can only be opened from outside the lift and simply look like a roof panel from inside.
Colin Bignell
Not a practical way to get the people out...try firemen going up to the control room and using the manual winch to bring the lift to the nearest floor. ;-)
What if it won't move ?
DG
Then the guy who designed it should be shot. A lift does not get stuck,its the electrical circuitry that takes a wobbler.
Not necessarily. As noted earlier, if the cable fails then the cage locks into its surroundings. In that situation, I guess the ladder is the only option.
Stranger things have happened ...
Eg, Fork lift driver backs into lift doors which thereafter won't open and also foul movement of the car.
I frequently see lorries stuck on the motorways because their brakes have failed safe = on. Would firemen attack the brakes on a lift so the could winch it down manually (If it were to happen, naturally).
3 men were killed in a mill where I once worked because they rolled a large flywheel into a lift car which descended uncontrollably.DG
The message from Derek ^ contains these words:
Mostly the safety clamps are held on by the weight of the car. If you're able to pull up on the lift wires the safetys release.
So are you texting this from a stuck lift, trying to decide what to do next?
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