Thinking outside the box

We are often asked by customers if it would be possible to lower one of the rails on our machine about a foot, so a forklift could be used to load the material onto the table. Some have spend considerable time trying to overcome the many obstacles to this approach. Examples are: How can a drive shaft be used? How do you keep the forks from accidentally damaging the rail? Does the material have to be stored on pallets?

The point is that these folks are all assuming that a forklift must be used in the conventional manner -- with the forks going under the object to be lifted. They are not "thinking outside the box!"

We gave some thought to the problem, and suddenly the solution came to us. Most forklifts have a maximum fork height of at least 10 feet. Why not use a pair of horizontal plate lifting clamps, and use the forklift like an overhead crane to lower the plate in place?

Bolt or clamp a strut across the two forks, and attach the lifting chain to it. The closer the forks are together, the less strain is on the strut. The forks are shown apart in the above image, so the cross strut can be seen.

This keeps the forks away from the machine, preventing accidental damage. It is also possible to lift a 4' x 8' plate out of a pickup truck bed -- something that most small forklifts can't normally do.

There is also a lesson to be learned here. We often focus on trying to solve problems at hand in a specific way, without taking the time to explore alternative approaches. While this is a pretty simple example, we can easily make the same kind mistakes in our business activities.

Whenever we meet a seemingly insurmountable obstacle, we should step back and see if we are trying to climb a high wall that has an end just out of our field of vision. Often if your immediate goal seems unreachable, another solution that accomplishes the same objective may be entirely possible.

Yours truly,

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Bill Kunz
President
Applied Robotics, Inc.