Dear members,
Can anyone help me please. I have a 8x5' board and want to winch this up 8' into the roof of my garage. I have numerous pulleys and rope and configured it so that both the left and right side of the board is winched using a single rope. The only problem is whatever configuration I have the board does not go up straight and is either pulled from the front or the back - but never the middle.
Has anyone got any plans on how to combat this?
Regards
Paul.
Paul, do a search in layout and layout building for lifts. On page 2 is a reference to Garage Layouts with Puleys. Think this will help answer some of your questions. I'm not smart enough to reference the link from here. Hope this helps you
Charlie
Paul,
I had the exact same problem with a 6' by 6' layout I had suspended from the ceiling of my son's bedroom. I used an electric winch mounted low on one wall of the room. The winch cable was attached to the middle of an aluminum spreader bar about three feet long with a pair of support cables attached to each end of the spreader bar. At first, I tried routing each pair of support cables to the corresponding side of the layout. The two cables on the right end of the spreader bar went to the front and back corners on the right side of the layout. The left side cables likewise went to the left side of the layout. NO DICE! The layout would always shift to one side or the other. Thus, I tried crossing two of the four cables so that the cables lifted the layout from opposite corners. In other words, one cable on the right end of the spreader bar went to the right side near corner of the layout while the other cable was routed to the left side far corner of the layout. Conversely, one cable on the left end of the spreader bar went to the left side near corner of the layout while the other cable was routed to the right side far corner of the layout. After I crossed the one pair of cables, I never had a leveling problem again. I'm pretty sure that the spreader bar is a must with this configuration.
You might ask why I used to have a suspended layout. It had to come down during a recent remodel of my house. I had to sell my race car due to failing eyesight so I'm now planning a new layout in my empty garage.
Hornblower
Here is a lift mechanism that I built to raise my 8' x 6' N Scale layout.
Http://photobucket.com/bobkc
I first tried using nylon rope with small pullys. Disaster. I then went to the current configuration. It lifts perfectly every time with very little effort.
Bob
Bob Casey