The Traction Lift- An Operations Overview

The Traction lift is the most versatile and an oldest kind of lift. These lifts make use of significantly less power as compared to other hydraulic systems with similar statistics.

To focus on the operations part, the lift consists of a lift car and a counterweight attached to the separate ends of a cable that travels over a big pulley wheel known as a Sheave, located at the top of the lift shaft. The lift and the counterweight are projected to balance one another, which means that a small quantity of power is required to move the lift cars’ up and down.

Once the lift car moves up, the counterweight moves down and the process goes on.

The counterweight and the lift car are mounted on guides which are usually similar to rails, that run inside the shaft in a vertical manner and make sure that the lift car does not stray from its path. The dual aim of the rails is to brake in an emergency.

There are various movies that have scenes shotn the lift, showing lift cables snapping and the passengers experiencing a scary situstion. However, in a real case scenario, this is very unlikely to happen as the suspension cables are made of high tensile steel, designed to be 10 times stronger than what they actually should be. With regular inspection of the lifts, any damages to the cables can be identified and instantly remedied.The traction lifts are moved from one place to another using a big electric motor connected to the Sheave. The design of this system varies depending on the application of the lifts. The traditional technique has been to utilize a DC motor attached with a worm gear.

An electric disc brake is connected with an axle, which generally is used to keep the lift car immobile while it is stagnant, the counterweight is intended to balance the loads.

In this configuration, the DC motor is fed using a generator which uses a 3 phase AC motor for driving it, hence converting the standard 3 phase AC supply which is available in a majority of lift motor rooms, to the DC which is required to supply the motors.

An increasingly famous alternative to this specific ‘geared’ configuration, mainly for express lift, is a great ‘gearless’ configuration wherein the current incoming to AC motor is reduced or increased to alter the output pace of DC motor. The DC motor spins at the required speed, thus no worm gears are required, though this configuration features a brake.

A third alternative which has relatively started being used recently is the AC motor, generally in the geared configuration. This removes the need for any DC equipment and a generator.

The brake and motor are controlled by a complex control system which is known as the ‘brain’ of lift, which controls the working of the lift appropriately.

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