Cutting edge design - Scissor lifts
December 1st 2003 Charlotte Stonestreet visited Advanced Handling to find out about bespoke design scissor lifts
If you are in the market for a new scissor lift, you could do much worse than go to Advanced Handling. In fact the Peterborough-based company offers the largest range of scissor lifts in the UK and has recently launched a dedicated website www.scissortables.co.uk to emphasise this.
Manufactured by the company, the premium mobile Elevation range available in manual hydraulic and battery electric versions is complemented by imported models.
Produced in the Far East, the manual Bulldog mobile range offers performance with economy. At the other end of the market, larger, static units which are either three- or single-phase mains powered are imported from Sweden. All the scissor lifts supplied by the company have numerous standard options, from roller tops to auto-levelling.
Bespoke units
With all these models and options, you might think that there wouldnt be any call for the Advanced Handling to make bespoke scissor lifts. However, this is a growth area for the company and one in which it is increasingly specialising. And, according to marketing manager, Roy Thompson, Advanced Handling is just about the only company in the UK to offer this type of service on such a scale.
Special and bespoke units we supply can be anything from a customer needing a slightly different handle or an irregular lid size, to completely bespoke builds, he says.
One of the companys recent successes on the bespoke front has been for a company that manufactures heating systems, which needed equipment to handle boiler cylinders. Once the cylinders have been welded by robots, they are moved on to the scissor lift tables to be finished along the seams by hand. Rollers at the end of the lid make it easy to push the cylinder on and off the table, while ball-rollers allow it to spin around while the finishing welding is taking
place. Originally, the company tried steel ball-rollers, but these were found to mark the cylinder, so they were changed to nylon.
To further aid the welding process, the scissor lift has been designed so that it is raised from the ground, allowing the welding pedal to be kicked from side to side under the unit as required.
Another feature that has proved very popular on these particular tables is push-and-go control, says Thompson. The operative simply pushes one button and the lift goes up to the desired working height. This is adjustable for each individual, so if one operative is taller than another, they can just turn a handle at shift start to set it to go to the right height for them.
Previously, the cylinders had been lifted on to standard work tables. Not only had this been awkward and time consuming, but there were also health and safety issues with the frequent manual lifting of the cylinders, which weigh around 40kg each. The bespoke scissor tables, of which 22 have now been supplied, have helped to resolve this, as well as enhancing production efficiency at the company.
In some cases, Advanced Handling is called upon to add the final piece of equipment to enable the effective operation of complete production systems. An example of this occurred when a company that manufactures catering equipment needed a way of moving appliances between levels on a two-tier production line. The company was able to supply a specially designed scissor table, which, says Thompson, acts somewhat like a junction in a railway track directing products on to the appropriate production level. Of a very high specification, this has to fit perfectly with the rest of the conveying system.
Situation
Sometimes, it is not the actual use that a lift table will be put to that means a bespoke model is required, but the situation in which it will be used. In one case that Thompson quotes, a prestige sports car manufacturer has purchased several units for use in a manufacturing facility that is frequently visited by the
end customer, the person who has
ordered the car. Reported to cost around three times as much as a standard unit, the lifts have been specified in a particular colour, with extra guarding and stainless steel components to fit in with the pristine production facility. Advanced Handling has supplied several units to the car manufacturer for use on different sections of the car, including the rear axle and parts of the engine.
Safety features
When a customer comes the Advanced Handling or one of its dealers with a request for a bespoke unit, often coming up with a design that will do the job is only the start. Many other factors need to be taken into consideration, not the least of which is health and safety. The health and safety benefits of scissor lift tables are well documented, but you also have to remember that they must incorporate various features to protect the user and anyone else who might be in the vicinity. Units that bring extra benefits in the way of reducing manual handling stresses often need to incorporate extra design safety features.
One bespoke static unit supplied by Advanced Handling has a tilting top
which has been designed to hold
pallets or stillage boxes at an angle. This enables operatives to tilt the unit towards them while loading, eliminating the need to reach right into the box. The real beauty of this unit is its health and safety features, explains Thompson. Any electric table of a certain closed height has to have a trip bar underneath the top that will stop the table being lowered if it meets an obstacle. In effect, this unit has two tops, so we had to put two safety trip bars on it, which was quite an achievement.
In common with a number of Advanced Handlings bespoke models, this was manufactured in Sweden, to the companys design, then imported to the UK, where the finishing touches were added before it went to the end user. The company has three technical designers, who use CAD software to come up with the designs. They can also draw on a wealth of experience from those on the shop floor, some of whom have 20 years plus experience in the manufacture of scissor lifts.
To say that Advanced Handling can come up with a scissor lift for every application is perhaps exaggerating a bit simply because of the nature of the equipment. You need to appreciate that the size of the table top will govern the lift height. Sometimes we get customers coming to us demanding ridiculous combinations of lid size and lift height wanting to lift 20m with a table top the size of a matchbox and it simply isnt possible! says Thompson.
However, there are usually ways around the problems, for example you can get a greater lift height with a small table top by using double, or even triple scissor mechanisms although this does mean compromising on the closed height.
One completely bespoke build that makes use of double scissors has been designed specifically for a mushroom harvesting system. Another, which uses a triple scissor system is going to be used at Gatwick airport to enable people in wheelchairs to board planes.
Production line design
Then there are applications that may not require a particularly high lift, but definitely need huge table tops and equally large capacities. Advanced Handling has recently supplied eight such units to Komatsu for use in the production of excavators. Operating in two lots of four, they lift the vehicles up off the ground four at a time to allow the tracks to be fitted. Each set of four lifts operates off one hydraulic oil supply, which meant that Advanced Handling had to be heavily involved from the start of the production line design, as the structure and ducting had to be carefully considered.
Theres no doubt that bespoke designs are a particular strong point for Advanced Handling, but the same ethos of development and innovation can also be seen in its regular models, which are constantly being evolved. An example of this is its development of a lightweight mobile lift table that is made from composite materials. Combining low
cost and low weight, this
ground-breaking product is being developed with the help of a Smart Award grant from the DTI.
If you want to find out more about Advanced Handlings comprehensive range of scissor lift tables, both
standard and bespoke, you can get on the Internet and go to www.scissortables.co.uk to get the full picture. More articles from Advanced Handling & Storage Ltd: | 
