Brian Morgan
Technical Director
Elevator Design
A stock solution with flexible features.
Hydraulic Elevator
For Henry IV part I the Designer and Director wanted to explore an elevavator. When researching I looked to Chris Fretts from Indiana Repretory Theatre for ideas. He had made a similar design to mine but used 4 towers to guide an platform. I took this idea (also pulled from construction elevators for high rises) and designed a stock elevator that would accommodate the theatres trap room and flexibility with size of elevator platform.
About the Elevator
The two towers can be seperated to any preferred width. There is a spacer bar that seperates the two elevator platform carriages that simply get replaced with the new desired width spacers and then apply a new steel platfrom to the top with the appropriate spanning beams for the distance. The elevator towers tapcon to the floor and I-beam connect at the tops. The system is a 2:1. The hydraulic cylinder pushed a head block and the roller chain is rigged as double purchase to achieve a greater travel for the platform.
Control and Function
PLC (programmable logic controller) was the chosen method for control. In the program and design saftey was always a number one priority. The system was equipped with photo sensors, tape switch, overtravel limits, and interlock system. The interlock system was a pneumatically driven pin system that would lock the elvator platform in place once the elevator reached a desired height. Positioning was controlled with a quadrature encoder. Through relay control with the PLC I was able to control pump functionality and all solenoids for the actuators. The HMI (Human Multimedia Interface) allowed for a very user friendly system. Input options included speed, position, jog mode, and allowed for writting cues.