Elevator Roller Guide Pivoting Arm for Transverse Rail Contact
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional elevator roller guides fail to compensate for transverse movement of elevator cars, leading to loss of contact with guide rails, especially with narrower rail designs, which disrupts smooth ascension and descent.
Innovation Solution
The elevator roller guide features a base with a face roller and side rollers, supported by a moveable support arm that pivots to maintain contact with the rail, incorporating adjustable springs to control movement and prevent the face roller from sliding off, ensuring continuous contact during transverse car movement.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If conventional roller guides are used with fixed roller positions, then the structure is simple and easy to manufacture, but the face roller loses contact with the guide rail when transverse movement occurs
Solution Approach 1:
The roller guide employs a movable support arm that can pivot dynamically in response to transverse movements of the elevator car. This dynamic adjustment allows the face roller to maintain continuous contact with the guide rail's front face, resolving the contradiction between structural simplicity and reliable contact maintenance under varying operational conditions.
Solution Approach 2:
The roller guide is divided into separable components including the base, support arm, and roller assembly. This segmentation allows the support arm to move independently to compensate for transverse displacement while keeping other components fixed, achieving reliable contact maintenance without requiring complete structural redesign.
2Area of stationary object
If the guide rail width is reduced to meet modern building requirements, then the aesthetic and spatial efficiency improves, but the face roller easily slides off the rail
Solution Approach 1:
The movable support arm provides dynamic compensation that allows the roller guide to adapt to narrower guide rails. By pivoting the support arm, the system maintains reliable contact on reduced-width rails, enabling modern architectural designs with narrower rails without sacrificing operational reliability.
3Reliability
If the support arm is made movable to compensate for transverse movement, then contact maintenance improves, but the device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The support arm is designed with a simple pivot mechanism that provides the necessary dynamic adjustment. This straightforward rotational degree of freedom enables contact maintenance through passive mechanical movement, achieving reliability improvement with minimal added complexity compared to more complex active control systems.
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
This design effectively compensates for transverse elevator car movement, maintaining substantial contact with the guide rail and preventing sliding, thereby ensuring smooth operation even on narrow rails.
Implementation Method 1
incorporating adjustable springs to control movement
Data Source
AI summary
An elevator roller guide configured to ride along a rail having a base member and a rail member. The rail member has a front face, a first side and a second side. The rail member further extends substantially perpendicular to the base member. The elevator roller guide preferably includes a car movement compensation member configured to maintain the face roller in contact with the front face of the rail member when the elevator car moves a first distance in a direction transverse to the rail member wherein the first distance is a distance that would cause the face roller to slide off or lose meaningful and/or substantial contact with the front face of the rail member without the car movement compensation member.