MonoMonday Challenge 402 - 18th Century Inventions

Well here goes for a month of inventions... To start I will take a liberal tangent to link my most recent patent with Welshmen Philip Vaughan's patent of the steel ball bearing in 1794. 

My invention doesn't  reduce friction about a fixed axis, but instead creates a "virtual" axis about which a forklift truck tilts a load on the forks.  Both ideas have the same effect in a way.  Vaughan's idea revolutionized the modern world to provide reliable efficient rotating motion in most anything motorized you use today.  My idea could revolutionize the forklift industry to reduce the power needed to rotate and orient the load on the forks and to remove the messy and maintenance intensive hydraulics.

I was presented with the challenge about ten years ago to implement electrics instead of hydraulics on the forklift mast carriage.  That's the part that goes up and down that manages the load out front.  Usually there are at least two functions to orient and place the load - translate left and right, and rotate up and down.  

Hydraulics are the most common and compact solution for placing the power where you need it, but it is messy, not very efficient, difficult to combine and manage multiple movements together - and requires a lot of maintenance.  

Typically on all forklift mast attachments, there is a fixed rotation axis behind the forks and then a hydraulic cylinder that either pushes or pulls to rotate the forks.  Since the rotation point is behind the forks, the rotation requires to lift or lower the load about the axis several inches.  There is also quite a lever arm with the load placed in front of the axis.  Electric actuators with the required force are very big and expensive.  So a classic solution wasn't feasible economically or dimensionally.

My novel idea was to create a virtual rotation axis in the center of load.  That means, depending how close I can manage to place the center of gravity to the rotation axis, I am neither lifting or lowering the load nor am I working against a long lever arm. I am only managing the inertia to rotate it.  

That in the end was the key to implement an electric actuator instead of the messy hydraulic solution for the tilt function.  My blip for today is a snapshot on the screen from my patent, which was filed about two years ago. :)

Last comment on this long entry is a comment about creativity.  The idea was a long time in the making.  In the sense that I actively worked on it until other priorities took over and then the project was always placed on the back burner due to the problems of sizing and costs.  Then one lovely day driving to the airport to pick up my father, the idea popped into my head.  I was literally bursting with enthusiasm as I explained the idea to my father who is also a mechanical engineer by training.

That's the beauty of inventing.  It is usually divided between technical skills, hard work, creativity and lastly serendipity.  You can cultivate creativity in your work, but you just can't schedule it.

So that's the story of my invention!

Thanks to laurie54 for hosting this month's challenge.