400 gallon project

[RicePaddy]

Love the picture. You should have had your wife dress up in a mermaid costume. Or is that your little secret??

Will

[untamed]

Man, I would love it if someone could provide me with a simpler design to do this... If you think you have it, please keep the following in mind:

1) Move the lower frame straight up the upper frame. Lift must be balanced.
2) There's no available room ABOVE the upper frame. Nothing can pass through the lower frame during the lift.

Here is the draft of what I'm thinking of building to hold the lights. What you don't see in this picture is the linear actuator that pulls on the cables. It will sit horizontally in top/middle of the upper frame.

Lights will be mounted under the lower frame.

The whole idea is to lift the lower frame straight up as much as possible..hopefully right up against the upper frame. (about 30")

It's impossible to follow the individual cables in too much detail on this crudely drawn diagram..suffice to say that as the actuator pulls horizontally, the pulleys translate that into vertical pull on all four sides for a straight lift. I think it will work, but....is it ever complicated!



Anyone know a good supplier of pulleys? How about a favourite aluminum fabricator?

[niloc16]

i would try princess auto for the pulleys. they are dirt cheap and have everything. a good friend of mine is a fabricator and a darn good one. have yet to see anything he cannot build or fix. if you want i can talk to him and see what he will charge to build the frame work. do you have the aluminum already? he live in richmond near the airport.

instead of having 4 points of lift, what if you were to put 2 supports across the middle, spaced out, on the lower frame at equal points. this is really hard to explain without drawing but on each of the 2 supports, had 2 attach points that a 1 cable is attached to. so in other words you would end up with a loop of cable attached at both on ends on one support. you would then only have to have 2 cables come down from the upper frame, attach to these 2 looped cable points and lift straight up. you can always use weights at corners to balance the unit if need be. sorry if this is confusing, i wish i could draw it for you

[untamed]

Like this?



I think the problem is that the tighter you make the loops (left), the less stability you get. The larger you make the loops (right), the less you can lift the frame because the peak of the loops will hit the pulleys.

[niloc16]

thats true. the is the idea i was thinking of. ok well back to your first drawing why not lift at the corners rather then the middled of the beams. i think that would give the most stability and even lifting

[untamed]

I think that lifting on the corners offers the most stability because it maximizes the distance between the pull points. Unfortunately, getting the cables to the corners would add even more complexity to the design than I've already got (more pulleys!).

Princess Auto was a great suggestion. I've now got the pulleys that I need.

[untamed]

It would say that the tank is "Done"..but I know that is a foolish statement. So I'm going to declare the tank "Ready".

The final big step was just completed. I gave up on being able to design the light lifter so well that I could have some aluminum fabricator build it perfectly....so I built it from 2x2.

Here's the overhead tracks. These allow the lights to slide straight backward into the fish room.



Here's the completed frames. This is a picture of both the upper and lower frames with the actuator fully lifted such that the lower frame is squeezed up against the upper frame. The actuator slides 30" horizontally, while the cables and pulleys tranfer the horizontal movement into vertical movement.



Here's the end result. Let's just say that the forest behind our house is no longer dark in the evening!

[untamed]

Here's some additional shots of the lighting system.

This first one shows how the lights can be lifted straight up by the actuator. A lift all the way to the ceiling takes just under 1 minute. That's the up/down controller that is laying on the bar in the front. I have some plans for that thing...



This is a side view showing how the lights can be rolled backward along the overhead tracks. The lights will go back another 2 feet, but the mess of power cords is currently pulling the lights back to this position each time I let go of them. I suppose that is a good indication of how smoothly they roll.



All in all...I can't believe that it actually works. I'm no engineer...I just made this stuff up and it actually works.

[niloc16]

that looks awesome. what type of lighting fixtures are those. looks sweet

[Delphinus]

Wow.