Scissor Lifts

A scissor lift raises its platform on crossed steel arms driven by a hydraulic ram. That arrangement has one enormous practical advantage: the whole mechanism folds flat into its own footprint, so the lift needs no shaft, no headroom above it and no machine room. Where a building needs to move a heavy load up a short distance, this is almost always the cheaper and simpler answer than a goods elevator.

Most of our scissor lifts do goods work. They bridge the height between a loading dock and a truck bed, carry pallets between a warehouse floor and a mezzanine, and sit in production lines to bring work up to a comfortable height so that operators are not lifting at awkward angles all shift. Pit-mounted units finish flush with the floor, so a pallet truck rolls straight on; surface-mounted units use approach ramps where cutting a pit is impractical.

The platform can be specified to match the job rather than the other way round. A roller deck lets pallets be pushed on and off without a truck. A turntable deck lets a load be rotated instead of manoeuvred. A tilting deck presents the load at an angle for easier picking. Capacities run from 500 kg for a workshop table up to 5,000 kg for heavy industrial handling.

Because people work beneath a raised platform, the safety design is specific to this machine. Mechanical safety props hold the platform up during maintenance so nobody relies on hydraulic pressure. Anti-shear skirts and toe guards close the gap where the arms cross, which is where the serious injuries on badly built machines happen. A manual lowering valve brings the platform down during a power failure, and the hydraulic circuit holds position if a hose bursts.