Conception and development of the electrical systems of a personal elevator

Abstract

In the past decades the buildings with crystal façades have been increasing and therefore the need to clean them. In addition there are more towers or more places that need to be accessed by ropes such as eolic parks that have to be inspected. To deal with all this demands traditional rope access is used. By means of ropes and ascenders the workers can climb or descend and perform the desired work. Rope access has some inconvenients. It requires strong users and for some applications where speed is critical it becomes a slow method. In order to increase the age span of the workers and to increase the speed of work the motorized solutions were invented. Among the different motorized solutions, the power ascenders offer a compact lightweight solution that is not dependent to the building and is not subject to a specific space on the ground to place an aerial work platform. On a power ascender powered by a battery, the power flows through the motor controller to the motor that will produce the torque needed to go up or will regenerate current when going down. Apart from that, there are electronic systems that handle the state machine and there is a friendly user interface that even if the user has not read the manual he/she will be able to operate the machine. Also included on the project there are some tests that have been considered relevant when validating the systems. Finally a brief economic study of the prototyping of the product has been included as well as an environmental impact.