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Author: Subject: Anyone on here know about electric forklifts?
fha772

posted on 25/7/10 at 09:58 AM Reply With Quote
Anyone on here know about electric forklifts?

Aye up,

Right just started thinking about summat last night, that if i build it, would be run by electric forklift running gear.

Has anyone on here got experiance of them?

I just want to know a few things about them at the mo, but possibly have a few more questions later on.

My current questions are...

1) How long will 1 run for continuously on a full charge?
2) What power are the drive motors?
3) How heavy are they?
4) What's the max load they will carry?
5) How long does it take to fully recharge 1 from flat?
6) What amperage is the average charger?
7) What voltage are the motors?

I know these are general questions, with no specific model in mind, at the moment I'm happy with general answers.
It's just the only experiance i have of them, is wathing them zip round my local cash and carry.

Cheers for any help, Frank.






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spiderman01980

posted on 25/7/10 at 10:08 AM Reply With Quote
well fork lifts are made to lift and move arond pallets that weigh tons i ones used a fork lift to hide a scorpio cosworth in the back of a trailer so the power is there, it does have a lot of batterys but u`d proberbly only need 1/4 what the forklift uses!
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fha772

posted on 25/7/10 at 10:16 AM Reply With Quote
I only really want to use the drive motor and controller, along with the batteries.
TBH, my idea is to try and develop a childrens funfair ride that doesn't need to use a generator, by using this running gear, and covering the roof of the ride in solar panels.

The idea came to me last night, and i'm just curious if it's a viable proposition.

(before you think i've had a really wild idea, i'm a travelling showman, aswell as a chippy owner)






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MakeEverything

posted on 25/7/10 at 11:37 AM Reply With Quote
The lifting gear is driven by hydraulic pumps.

The weight on a forklift (counterbalance) is the massive solid steel thing on the back.

Thew batteries are slightly larger than car batteries, but they vary from make to make.

You will normally need a three phase charger to charge a forklift, which takes about 12 hours to fully charge. There is a procedure for this too, depending on the type of truck and battery.

Nice idea, and the speed controller would be useful, but you will need the spec of all of the components to figure it out.





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Richard.

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big-vee-twin

posted on 25/7/10 at 11:49 AM Reply With Quote
Photovoltaic panels are not that efficient, they are quoted at peak conditions i.e. in the Lab KWp.

In Britain you will get 800 watts from a 1 KWp panel - the commercial quality one's cost around £4,000.00 per KW installed.

They also need a large surface area 1kw needs approximately 5m2





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Stott

posted on 25/7/10 at 11:57 AM Reply With Quote
1) How long will 1 run for continuously on a full charge? ****Some in work go for about 8 hours flat
2) What power are the drive motors? ****Dunno
3) How heavy are they? ****Varies depending on the rated load
4) What's the max load they will carry? ****As above, varies, 2t, 3t, 5t, etc etc etc
5) How long does it take to fully recharge 1 from flat? ****About 6-12 hours depending on the truck
6) What amperage is the average charger? ****We have smaller trucks charging at 20A up to ones at about 50A
7) What voltage are the motors? ****Dunno sorry


[Edited on 25/7/10 by Stott]


The batteries in our trucks are huge, like 1.5 foot by 3 foot by 4 foot, and get bigger too. Some trucks have the batteries under the seat panel and the whole thing is about 3 x 3 foot x 1 deep if that makes any sense.


[Edited on 25/7/10 by Stott]

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fha772

posted on 25/7/10 at 12:39 PM Reply With Quote
My basic plan is...

The roof on a childrens ride, is approx 19.5 square metres, so cover this in solar panels.

The drive on most rides is a tyre drive fitted in the trailer chassis, driving onto a flat steel ring on the underside of the ride's platform.

So my plan is, to fit the batteries, in the trailer chassis(under the ride's platform), along with the motor, with the controller mounted on the towbar of the trailer(like any other ride).

Have the solar panels on the roof, with the cable running down the centre of the main pole, to slip rings to transmit the power from th moving top, to the static trailer chassis, to charge the batteries, during daytime. I thought this should keep the batteries topped up enough, so they would be close to maximum charge for evening running.

Most rides, on fairs are only open for 6-3 hours a day, and motor will be driving for a maximum of 30-45% of that time.
So, in theory, if it gets light ay 6am, and the fair doesn't open until 2pm(average fair opening on weekends, 6pm weekdays), you'll have an average of 8 hours of free charge time, without the ride being in operation.

Also, the ride on average, will only be open, at most, Wednesday til Saturday (average fair opening days), and the solar panels will still be charging the batteries when the ride is packed up, and on the road.

I can't see why, the panels alone won't give enough charge to keep the ride in full time operation, with the mains charger only being used as a back-up, and sometimes to "top-up" the charge from time to time.

Also, with the advances in LED lighting technology, the ride could be fully lit, using LEDs, so power consumtion would be very low. You could also run the lighting from seperate batteries, mounted in a box on the centre of the ride's platform, so it's independent of the drive batteries, also the lights can be switched off duing daytime, so as the save the batteries until needed.

Seeing as the average new small childrens ride sells for between £25,000 and £40,000. I'm sure if you design and build an "Eco-Friendly" ride, it would eligable for some sort of government grant/subsidy scheme, that would make it a very attractive purchase for ride operators, and theme parks.
(It would also be an atrractive advertising point for theme parks, who want to improve their "Eco" credentials.)



(Can you tell I've been thinking about it alot since last night?)

[Edited on 25/7/10 by fha772]






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hillbillyracer

posted on 25/7/10 at 01:19 PM Reply With Quote
We've just started dealing with an electric ATV where I work, it runs 2 banks of 4 batteries wired up in series to give 48v per bank & then the banks are joined in parallel.
The batteries are the same size as used on a smallish lorry (say up to 10ton) & give a range of between 20 & 50 mile depending on the speed & terrain. It can do 25mph & weighs about 750-800kg. It takes an overnight charge to go from empty to full.
Given the performance it has from it's 8 batteries I'd expect you could get a workable machine with a few more batteries (it's not like you'll have too much of a space or weight issue like the ATV does).
But I'm not too sure how well the solar charging would work, this is britain & with an outdoor leisure activitiy it's always gonna want to rain!

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fha772

posted on 25/7/10 at 02:45 PM Reply With Quote
Right then, I've just done a few quick sums (so not 100% accurate), I'll show my train of thought here.

The drive ring on a ride is 12ft dia, a ride does approx 10rpm, this works out to 24,941 ft per hour, or 4.72mph.

You'll get an average maximum 7.5 rides per hour (3 minutes riding, 5 minutes loading/unloading)

This works out at 22.5 mins per hour, running time.

So, in a maximum 8 hour day(which hardly happens), your looking at a total running time of 180 minutes(or 3 hours).

So that means a working range of 14.16 miles (3x4.72mph).

So, that means I'm looking at a range of 20-25 miles(allowing a margin of error), at a top speed of 6mph(allowing a margin of error)

The rotating platform, when loaded, will weigh in at approx, 1.5-1.75 tons, and will be mounted to a 1metre slew ring(this should give a minimum amount of friction).

And by my calculations, i should be able to carry a maximum of 1 ton of batteries.

So to me it sounds do-able.

If you add in the down-time, where panels will be charging with nothing going out of the batteries, it seems all within sensible limits.

What do you think?






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Richard Quinn

posted on 25/7/10 at 04:47 PM Reply With Quote
We have an electric FLT and it's been a complete liability. When we got it the batteries wouldn't hold a charge so we have to buy a new set (£3k). It's a 2 tonne machine and quite useful but one of the "new" batteries has cracked after less than two years and the slow leaking acid has eaten away quite a lot of the supporting metal work. We now need to take the batteries out to do the repairs (which would be simple if we had another FLT!!)
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paulf

posted on 25/7/10 at 09:41 PM Reply With Quote
I would think that a forklift motor would have far more power than required to operate the ride I recall seeing kids rides with smallish DC motors driving them.A geared down 1 horse power 240v motor would probably drive it and could be driven from an inverter powered by a few Leisure battery's.
Paul

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