Dual-Mode Lug and Guide Socket for Building Component Alignment
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current systems for handling and aligning structural building-frame components during construction lack efficiency and precision in picking, transporting, and vertically stacking components, leading to challenges in achieving precise alignment and assembly.
Innovation Solution
A system featuring a dual-mode, sequential-task lug, a clamshell-style releasable clasp, and a guide socket structure that enables both pick and stack-registry operations, allowing for precise handling and alignment of building components through camming engagement, facilitating the stacking and mounting of components.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Manufacturing precision
If conventional handling systems are used for building components, then the system is simpler, but precision and efficiency in picking, transporting, and vertically stacking components deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The lug component is designed with dual functionality: it serves as both a handling attachment point for picking/transporting components and as a registration feature for precise vertical stacking. This multi-functional design eliminates the need for separate handling and alignment systems, achieving high precision without proportionally increasing system complexity
Solution Approach 2:
The guide socket acts as an intermediary element that receives the lug during stacking operations. The socket-lug interface provides precise geometric constraints that guide vertical alignment, while the clasp mechanism serves as an intermediary for secure handling. These intermediary components enable high-precision operations through well-defined geometric relationships
2Productivity
If conventional handling methods are used, then the system is easier to operate, but productivity and construction efficiency deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The lug and guide socket are pre-configured with complementary geometries that automatically provide alignment guidance during stacking. The registration features are built into the component design itself, so alignment actions are performed automatically as part of the stacking process rather than requiring separate alignment operations, thereby improving productivity without significantly complicating operation
Solution Approach 2:
The handling function (via clasp on lug) and alignment function (via guide socket receiving lug) are merged into a unified component system. The same lug that provides handling attachment also serves as the registration feature for vertical stacking, combining multiple functions into a single integrated solution that improves efficiency
3Measurement precision
If conventional stacking methods are used, then the process is simpler, but vertical registration accuracy deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The lug features an asymmetric profile with a cam surface that interfaces with the guide socket in a specific orientation. This asymmetric geometry ensures correct vertical alignment and prevents misalignment during stacking, providing high registration accuracy through geometric constraints rather than complex adjustment mechanisms
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
The system enables efficient and precise handling and alignment of building components, ensuring accurate vertical registration and assembly, enhancing construction efficiency and precision by allowing components to be securely grasped, transported, and aligned for seamless stacking and mounting.
Implementation Method 1
guide socket structure, or a guide socket, which is includable, or formed (as will be explained in the setting of a column) in the base of a component to be handled—typically a column—to enable guided, stack-registry lowering of such a component, poised as an overhead component, onto the top of an underlying component for mounting thereon, and specifically a lowering which involves guided, and if needed cammed (i.e., guided sliding contact), reception in the socket structure of a lug
Data Source
AI summary
A system for handling various structural building components including a pick and stack-registry lug which is anchorable to the top of a building component for handling that component in either one, or both sequentially, of its two, pick and stack-registry functional modes, (b) a clamshell-style, releasably lockable clasp adapted to receive and close capturingly upon the lug under operational circumstances with the lug anchored to the top of a building component, and ready to function in its pick category of component-handling behavior, and (c) a guide socket includable in the base of a building component functional for camming, guided reception of a lug with the lug then functioning in its stack-registry mode of behavior to facilitate overhead stack registering of two building components in relation to the lowering of an overhead component onto the top of an underlying component whose top also has a lug anchored to it.