Well, that's nifty! Not sure what it is for, but from someone who drives a forklift regularly.....you have a top heavy load, and the slots would give a distinct advantage over the notches in preventing it from toppling during transit...
I've been tasked to draw up a sort of aluminum pallette - here's a basic line drawing of the thing - it's 6' by 4':
and here's a side view of the foot rail, with possible locations for a hole or notch - there'd be two of whichever is the "right" one, of course:
The PHB, who's a weldor, wants notches, but it seems almost intuitive that a hole would reduce the overall stiffness less than a notch.
My ME background consists of an Erector Set at age 7. ;-)
And I can't help but think of those home improvement things where they say, "If you're running pipe through your floor joists, don't notch the joist - go through the middle."
So, are holes better, or notches?
The foot rail is 6" wide and 66" long, and 1" thick 6061-T6 aluminum.
Thanks! Rich
The hole is better for strength, but the notch is better for the forklift driver, since he can just drop the tips of the fork to the ground and slide them in, rather than stuff about trying to align them with the hole.
Stupid material to use for a pallet by the way, is this our taxes at work?
Cheers
Greg Locock
Well, it's not exactly a pallet:
I made this with PDF995, so you'll have to rotate it. As you can see, I've gone with slots. The weight of the pipe assembly is ~100 lbs, and the fixture is all 1" thick aluminum plate.
IOW, I'll take the stiffness, and if the fork lift drivers have to learn to be competent, well, poor babies! ;-)
And, yes, it's our tax dollars at work, but it's a purely defensive system - The Airborne Laser:
I say it's purely defensive, because below about 45,000 feet, the laser is useless. It warms up a spot on the side of the rocket motor of the attacker's ballistic missile, such that a spot on its case softens and it blows itself up by its own internal pressure while it's still boosting over the territory of the sender. :-) [0]
Thanks! Rich [0] Or whoever gets caught in between, but we don't talk about that much. =:-O
Is that jig just used for shipping or does that pipe section have to be standing upright while in the jig for installation and/or operation? The reason I ask is that it would seem to me that shipping the pipe lying down would be preferable. If that jig is going to be used to align the unit while installing it, the slots might cause problems when the forks are withdrawn. It would be easier to drop the forks to the floor (with notches) and not risk snagging them on the bottom of the slots and putting stress on the pipe joints.
Its gouing to have to work fast. Those boosters only last about 40 seconds before they blow themselves up.
-- Paul Hovnanian mailto:Paul@Hovnanian.com ------------------------------------------------------------------ If the first attempt at making a drawing board had been a failure, what would they go back to?
Rich Grise wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@example.net:
Since this system has a laser and probably some kind of optical bench with mirrors you absolutely want to go with notches, and big ones at that. There is no doubt that some forklift driver will be going too fast into the pallet and will be a little off on his estimate of the notch positions. The resulting jar will not be good for your optics. The difference in stiffness is very small.
-- ------- Charly Coughran ccoughran@DELETE-TO-RESPOND-UCSD.EDU
Right, this strongly argues for notches, because one dimension is constrained by the floor, allowing for a smaller vertical cutout.
--
Thanks,
- Win
This is the wrong design philosophy for a part like this.
The forklift drivers *will* hit the floor with the forks, at some point. It's all very well to say "they should have been competent!" but that won't fix the damage after it's happened.
Anything that's going to be handled by heavy machinery has got to be built to take the damage that will reasonably ensue. I used to work in the oilfield...every conceivable way that the transport process can damage your equipment will, eventually, take place. Typically at the most inconvenient moment. It is the designers job to protect the part from what the users
*will* do to it, not what you want them to do to it.A hole with a dented bottom will have the same strength, for conservative analysis, as a notch (no credit for buckled aluminum). Since you can't reasonably assume that your hole will never get damaged, and that gives it the same strength as a notch, why not go with the notch and avoid the entire issue?
Tom.
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