The Mechanical Handling and Storing of Material

CHAPTER XXXVIII MISCELLANEOUS LOADING AND UNLOADING DEVICES The ever-increasing cost of hand labour, as well as the ease with which electrical power can be led to, and connected with, portable mechanical appliances, has opened a great field for such devices, either mounted on rail tracks or on ordinary carriage wheels which need no rails. One of the essential features of such installations is great simplicity in handling them, as they are generally operated by the most unskilled of labourers. Figs. 856 and 857 show a portable loading device by Fredenhagen.1 This particular machine is designed for loading salt from a heap into trucks which are placed beneath the discharge shoot. The diagrams show that the platform of the truck is provided with four pairs of wheels, so placed that the whole machine may be reversed on the rails. The two pairs of wheels shown on the track can be raised by screw tackle and worm, and worm wheels; each pair of wheels being coupled so as to move simultaneously, and the effect of raising one set of wheels is equivalent to bringing the other four (which stand at right angles to them) down. The whole machine is then lifted by hand and turned 90°, if more convenient in that position for loading. The elevator, which constitutes the principal portion of the device, is driven at the lower terminal by a belt and worm gear from an electric motor, and the elevator well is 1 The facts and the illustrations are taken from an article by Hub. Hermanns in the Zeitschrift des Vereines deutscher Ingenieure, of 5th June 1913. 6ri