golf cart lift platform

groundpounder

can you post some pics of your table please thanks

Monsterezgokid

Ok, great, now i know what your talking about, so now we can get to the muscle of the system

As for the hydraulic system, it technicaly can be used in any direction, either it be up, down, sideways. It wont matter. Think of it this way, using a hydraulic system is like a automotive brake system, its a close system other than the reservoir. Now the system is only as good as how it is sealed. If any air got into the system, then it wont work properly, and thus would have issues running in any direction, and the cylinders would jump and skip as they were going up or down, or wont go at all. the only issues you would have with angle in a hydraulic system would be pump and reservior. the suction inlet needs to allways be below the hydraulic level, and the level goes down signifcantly when the cylinders fill up.

Ok now as for the pneumatic systems, i would consider the cleanist one to go with. a leak here wont cause you to franticly find some towels to save your garage floor

A pneumatic system is super easy to set up, and ill post a pic of how a simple 2 cylinder system is set up.



As you can see above its not too compilcated. (this is if you want to go with electric solinoids, ill have a much eazer controll device later on) You basicaly have 2 air solinoids. One to controll inlet, one to exhaust (the one with the black small muffler on it to quite it down)
After that you have a flow regulator. (the small rectangle brown thing with the chrome screw on the top) this will help pervent your table from shooting up to the sky when there is no load on it. And finaly your splitter that goes to the top bottom of the cylinder so that they push out. You can see on the top inlet of the cylinders there some of those black plastic mufflers. Because we are not using the cylinders to pull in, air just freely moves in and out when it goes up and down. The muffler pervents dust and junk to get in that can add wear to the gaskets inside.

Overall its not to hard of a system to set up, and it all uses standard fittings like those on an air compressor.. and i used 3/8 hd air compressor hose. In the automation sector we use the thin flexy hosing thats kinda like surgical tubing that can withstand like 600psi. but we never run the cylinders that high. Its just for durabllity and its thin size.. For our applications here, good quality 250+psi rated hosing is just fine.

Ok now for the easy cool controll way that i wish i would of done before i bought the air solinoids for my system.

an air lever controll valve would work perfectly. it does the job of 2 solinoids, and will be perfect for the application. it will allow you to raise, lower, and set stationary. which is just what we would need for this application. and they are cheap. just around 35$.

Now if you want some numbers on what to look for. this is what i think you will need for your system

-2 or 3 cylinders that are a 3.5" bore or More. and i would guess depending on how much travel they would need but a good figure is around 10-12"+ A 3.5" bore will give you 769 lb of force at 80 psi.. so 3 at 100psi for example will give you 2886 lb of force wich should be good enough

- a hand control valve, or 2 air solinoids perfably with a 3/8ntp thread on the end to make it compatable with air compressor hardware
-air flow adjuster
-sliencers,
-and a distribution block

thas about it.
as for mounting the cylinders onto your table, the back of the cylinder has 4 bolt points. they all should its standard on them. you can make up or buy a simple c bracket thing that allows it to piviot as it goes up. The end of the cylinder rod has a thread. It varies depending on the size of cylinder. you can simply mount a swivel eye rod end on the end, and weld a c bracket onto the table with a bolt through it and the rod end. so you wont have any binding.

you will need one with a female threaded end.

the c bracket looks identical to this


Good luck. i wish i had the time to go full tilt on my table, but i have too many carts to work on. Darn things

And yes, pictures would be great to see

MIG-ateur

Thanks ezgokid!

I have the full picture now and it does seem easy, but still not sure which way I am going to go...trying to minimize costs! HA!

Back to the hydraulic option, will the self-contained long travel rams using air over hydraulics operate horizontally? The ones like are used on engine lifts. Their operation manuals state that they should only be used vertically or near vertical. Also, could the air valve assembly be removed from the ram assembly and located remotely with a short hose or tubing installed between the air valve and the ram base?

The rams I am referencing are like this:

Torin Pneumatic Long Ram Jack — 8-Ton Capacity, Model# TQ30806
Ideal for converting existing hydraulic hoists to convenient pneumatic operation. Provides 20 in. total travel.

Thanks again for all your help!

Monsterezgokid

I see what your using now


ok well..

I guess that the reason that they state vertical operation only is because that i guess that if it was in a horizontal position, maby that air valve assembly is only designed to work verticaly, and if run horizontaly, air might get into the hydraulic system, or hydraulic fluid will get into the air hose when you retract it. Personaly i have never tinkered with a system like that yet. but its very similar to the air assited bottle jacks that ive seen around.

Now i totaly get your ideal of remote locating that air valve assembly. I personaly dont see why you cannot do that. Like a remote reservior system. as long as you use hosing that can hanlde up to around 2000psi for the hydraulic side.
I wish i had some schematics of some type for something of similar use. but from here on in for that air assit ram, its all experimentation. Sorry i couldent help you any more than that. Im not in one of my co-op intern semesters this summer. im back in school, so i cant redaly ask some of the fluid system pros at work. But ill try and find out some more.

If that system has a beed valve on the hydraulic side, then there is no real harm if you experiment, and want to restore the system back to normal, you can still get most of the air out of the hydraulic side, and it should work as good as new hopefully

If you can get that setup to work, then that would be one of the best suted hydraulic systems for our projects. Easy to use, cheap, and looks like its up to the task