The Mechanical Handling and Storing of Material

ELEVATORS FOR LARGE OBJECTS 37 Much of the frozen meat, especially mutton, handled in the foreign meat market, is exceedingly hard when it arrives; but some of it, especially chilled beef, is in a very different condition, and the less it is handled the better.1 These mechanical devices are therefore very serviceable, not only as labour-saving appliances, but also on account of their ability to handle the material with less injury than is usually the case with hand labour. The hoist consists of two pairs of chains which run over two pairs of sprocket wheels, one pair being fixed on the top floor and the other on the bottom floor. Attached to the chains at certain intervals are cage-shaped buckets, so arranged as to take sacks, barrels, or the carcasses of animals. Each receptacle will take a whole sheep or a quarter of beef. In the latter case the cages are suspended above their centre of gravity, so as always to be in a perpendicular position. They are loaded on any Fig. 37. Elevator for Handling Sacks. Fig. 38. Elevator for Handling Barrels. floor that may be convenient and deliver automatically on to any other floor as may be required. On each floor there is a delivery platform, consisting of five or more steel arms, which may be set to deliver or to receive, or may be moved out of the way altogether by the system of levers which may be worked from any of the floors. Thus at the floor on which the meat, etc., is loaded, the steel platform is set to deliver the carcasses to the cages as they pass, the cages being formed also of steel bars which clear the steel arms of the platforms. The carcasses are merely placed on these platforms, and find their way, one after another, into the cages as they arrive on the levels of the floors. They pass with the elevator chains over the top sprocket wheels, and as soon as they arrive on one of the delivery platforms the loads are arrested whilst the cages pass on. The platform is inclined at an angle sufficient to allow the load to slide down on to the floor of the 1 For another form of sack elevator see Figs. 643 and 644.