Hello. We are a small company that designs amusement park ride structures and mechanisms. Up until now we have outsourced all our FEA work, but now we want to bring this in house. We are using SolidWorks 2006 but recently we have been investigating the upgrade to SolidsWorks 2010+Simulation. A...
Hello. Does anyone know of a company that manufactures quick release mechanisms that can be incorporated into other devices? It would need to be able to hold loads up to 10kN, before releasing them on a given signal. The mechanism will be required to operate every 40 seconds over an operating...
Hi. Im designing an amusement device which consists of a platform that will be suspended on 4 inflated vibration isolators. Underneath the platform is a motor with an eccentric weight. Passengers (up to 12 people) will stand on the platform and the motor will be driven in bursts, at various...
Hello. Can anyone provide any information about TMS-80 steel? We have to provide some parts for a machine from some old drawings, and one of the parts is specified as TMS-80 forged steel wheels. Can anyone point me in the direction of the material properties for this steel? Also, does anyone...
Does anyone know of a manufacturer of heavy duty ball and socket joints that are suitable for outdoor use? I have recently seen them used on a relatively low key pedestrian bridge and couldnt imagine that they were specially machined just for that.
We want to use them top and bottom of a...
Hello all. I am currently designing a turntable that must operate underwater, but I am having a great deal of difficulty in finding a suitable support wheel. The wheel must take a load of 22kN and must be able to be continually submerged in freshwater. I have looked at stainless steel but the...
Hello. I have constructed a Hazard and Risk Assessment using Excel, and so I have a large table with a lot of small font multiline text in most of the the cells (with wordwrap switched on). However, when the table is printed, the text in many of the cells "strays" slightly over the gridlines...
We are a Dutch company designing spindles and shafts for various purposes (wheel supports, rotating connections etc) and have for many years used an old German textbook called Hanchen to determine safety factors and allowable fatigue stress levels. This document gave methods of calculating...
Hi
We are developing a machine that involves a mass of the order of 300-400 tonnes suspended on cables. The mass will be lowered at a constant acceleration of about 0.5g to a maximum velocity of 12m/s. We need to have a secondary system that is able to trim the velocity of the mass should it...
I am looking at a project that will use a long ram tube (about 200mm dia and 80m long) that has a 50-60mm wide slot along the length. The tube will contain a "bullet" which acts as a piston plate. An armature passes through the slot. I need to find some kind of sealing system so...
I am looking at designing a system that uses a flywheel to accelerate a secondary mechanical system to a required speed via a clutch. The clutch is gradually closed so that the secondary system is accelerated smoothly. Once the secondary system has reached a set speed, the clutch will open...
We are looking into the possibility of constructing a device (probably using electromagnets) that can transfer a high shear force from the source, to another magnetic item. This is a bit like the old trick of having a paperclip on a sheet of paper and a magnet underneath - move the magnet and...
