Product possibility

Posted by Larry Snyder on May 17, 2008, 4:21 pm

HI all. I've been selling nitinol wire on e*ay for some time now. One of
the guys wanted help designing a lift. I thought it was a pretty cool idea.
Picture at: http://www.pacificsites.com/~snyder/Ebay/Jack2.jpg He said it
was ok to manufacture this. Anyway, what I wanted to know is if there is
any interest and if so what should the specs be. I don't know what the cost
of production would be but it can't be much. Thanks in advance.
Larry

Posted by on May 18, 2008, 2:09 pm

> Picture at:http://www.pacificsites.com/~snyder/Ebay/Jack2.jpg He

looks neat... build a prototype and post a video

Posted by John Nagle on May 18, 2008, 2:40 pm

Larry Snyder wrote:

> HI all. I've been selling nitinol wire on e*ay for some time now. One of
> the guys wanted help designing a lift. I thought it was a pretty cool idea.
> Picture at: http://www.pacificsites.com/~snyder/Ebay/Jack2.jpg He said it
> was ok to manufacture this. Anyway, what I wanted to know is if there is
> any interest and if so what should the specs be. I don't know what the cost
> of production would be but it can't be much. Thanks in advance.
> Larry

As drawn, with a single bottom pivot, it will fall over.
Real scissor lifts have a two-point sliding base of support.

John Nagle
Animats

Posted by Jonathan on May 19, 2008, 5:06 am

> HI all. I've been selling nitinol wire on e*ay for some time now. One of
> the guys wanted help designing a lift. I thought it was a pretty cool idea.
> Picture at:http://www.pacificsites.com/~snyder/Ebay/Jack2.jpg He said it
> was ok to manufacture this. Anyway, what I wanted to know is if there is
> any interest and if so what should the specs be. I don't know what the cost
> of production would be but it can't be much. Thanks in advance.
> Larry

I've been working on a scissor lift design for the head of a mobile
robot so this was very interesting to see.

However, apart from the need for 2-point attachments top and bottom
(one or both of which must slide), I'd be concerned about power
consumption. The lift will have a natural tendency to collapse, even
under its own weight, so maintaining lift will require constant
current through the nitinol wire.

I'm sure the simplicity of the design using this muscle wire instead
of motors could find some good applications so keep working on it and
try building a prototype to test.

~Jonathan

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