English
Español
Guide to Screwnut Lifting Systems Principles and Applications
September 21, 2026
On this page (16 sections)
A screwnut lifting system holds its load with no brake at all, and that single property explains both why it is one of the safest home-lift drives and why it will never be the fastest.
A screwnut lifting system carries a car or platform on a threaded screw and a driven nut. Nothing is held by ropes, and nothing is pushed by hydraulic fluid: the load rests on a thread flank. Once that picture is clear, every other question about the drive becomes a consequence of the geometry rather than a marketing claim: what happens in a power cut, why the speed stops near 0.15 m/s, why travel ends around 15 m, and why lubrication is a schedule rather than a nuisance.
This guide follows the mechanism from the motor to the building structure: the self-locking condition in numbers, the thread forms that decide efficiency and wear, where the published travel and speed limits come from, and the inputs a supplier needs to confirm a configuration. It assumes you are specifying equipment for a project rather than assembling a lift yourself.
- Whether the mechanism can hold the load with no brake in your configuration — and what changes that answer.
- Which thread and nut pair fits a low-rise residential or accessibility project, and which belongs in a machine tool instead.
- Where the travel, speed and capacity limits come from, so you can recognise a specification that cannot be built.
- Which site conditions must be measured before a quotation is meaningful.
01 · What "screwnut lifting systems" actually means
The phrase arrives in several spellings: screwnut lifting systems, screw-nut drive, screw-driven lift, lead-screw lift. Suppliers use them interchangeably, and they all describe one mechanism: a threaded screw runs the full height of the travel, and a nut that engages that thread is driven by the motor. Either the screw turns and the nut travels, or the nut turns in place and climbs the static screw. In the equipment our own product pages describe, the motor rotates the nut along the screw, and the car or platform is fixed to the nut carrier.
That is worth pinning down before you compare quotations, because two suppliers can quote "screw-driven" for machines with different thread forms, different nut materials and therefore different maintenance profiles. The five terms below are the ones that appear on specification sheets, and they are the ones that decide what the machine can and cannot do.
The mechanism itself: a threaded screw plus a driven nut. No suspension ropes and no hydraulic oil, so the vertical load is transferred through thread contact rather than through tension or pressure.
The same drive seen from the product side — the name most suppliers sell under. "Screw-driven" says nothing about the thread form, which is why the next two rows matter more than the label.
A thread where the nut slides on the thread flank — trapezoidal or acme profiles. Friction is high, efficiency is moderate, and that friction is exactly what makes the drive self-locking. This is the thread form behind almost every lead screw lifting system sold for homes and accessibility projects.
A thread with recirculating balls between screw and nut. Friction is low and efficiency is high, which makes it excellent in machine tools and generally means it cannot hold a load by itself — it needs a brake.
Axial travel produced by one full revolution. Lead ties three otherwise separate properties together: lifting speed, the self-locking margin, and how far the nut slides per metre of travel — which is the wear rate in disguise.
Two conventions cause most of the confusion. First, "screw" is often used for the whole drive rather than the threaded rod, so a quotation that says "screw diameter" may mean the screw or the nut carrier.
Second, the term screwnutWritten both as "screwnut" and "screw nut". Public patent literature uses the hyphenated form (for example EP0895957A3, "Screw-nut elevator"), while suppliers' catalogues often drop the hyphen. The mechanism is the same. is a direct translation of the German and Chinese terms for the pair, and it survived into English because the drive really is the union of those two parts. Engineers describing the same hardware often say screw and nut mechanism instead, which is the phrase to search for when you want the mechanical literature rather than the lift catalogues. Where this page writes "screwnut lifting systems", it means the mechanism and its applications, not a single model.
02 · The load path: how motor torque becomes lift
Most descriptions of a screw-driven lift stop at "the motor turns the screw, the nut moves". The useful question is what carries the weight while the car is standing still on a landing with the motor off, because that is the condition under which every lift spends most of its life. The answer determines the safety story, the lubrication schedule and the maintenance items.
Step 1. Motor torque turns the nut; the engaged thread converts rotation into an axial thrust along the screw axis, and the nut carrier lifts the car.
From motor torque to a vertical force
The conversion happens in the thread pair, and it is deliberately lossy. A sliding thread turns only part of the motor's rotational work into lifting work; the rest becomes heat at the contact surface. A well-specified residential drive accepts that loss, because the same friction is what lets the machine stand still without a brake. Gearboxes or belts usually sit between the motor and the nut to trade speed for torque, which is one reason the car moves slowly even when the motor spins quickly.
What carries the load while the car stands still
The nut rests on the thread flank. The vertical force travels from the car into the nut, from the nut into the flank, from the flank into the screw, and from the screw into the bearing that anchors it to the structure. The motor carries nothing at that moment — a point worth checking with any supplier, because a machine whose specification only works while the motor is energised will need a brake, and a brake is an extra component with its own inspection interval.
Why the guide rail is not optional
A screw is efficient at carrying axial load and poor at carrying bending. If the car hangs off the nut with its weight off-centre, the moment must go somewhere: a wheelchair driven in on one side, a person leaning on the handrail, or a pallet placed unevenly are the common cases. Guide rails and their brackets take that moment, which is why the rail assembly and the wall or shaft it fastens to appear in every site survey. Treating the screw as a structural column is the most common misreading of the mechanism, and it shows up later as noise, wear or vibration rather than as a visible failure.
03 · Self-locking: why the nut holds when the power fails
A self-locking screw thread holds the load without any applied torque. This is the property that makes a screw-driven lift attractive in a home, where a power cut with someone inside is a realistic event, and where a fall is a serious consequence. It is also widely mis-stated: "self-locking" is not a fixed feature of the drive, it is a relationship between the thread geometry and the friction in the contact.
The condition is short enough to write in one line. With lead l and pitch diameter d₂, the lead angle is λ = arctan(l / (π·d₂)). Self-locking requires that this angle stays below the friction angle φ = arctan(μ), where μ is the coefficient of friction of the thread pair. A steep lead or a very well-lubricated low-friction pair pushes λ above φ, and the load starts to be able to drive the mechanism backwards.
Self-locking check — lead angle vs friction angle
Move the values to match a candidate specification. The arithmetic follows λ = arctan(lead / (π · pitch diameter)) against φ = arctan(μ). It is a geometry check, not a design approval: thread form, surface finish, temperature and lubrication all move μ in service.
The same relationship, three ways
The bars below hold the pitch diameter at 30 mm and change the thread pair. The point they make is that "self-locking" is a margin, not a category: a 6 mm lead keeps the angle close to three and a half degrees and sits comfortably inside the friction angle of a greased steel-and-bronze pair, while a 30 mm lead lands near eighteen degrees, where no realistic lubrication regime can hold the load. Ball screws sit on the other side of the same idea — their friction angle is under one degree, so even a modest lead angle back-drives.
What self-locking does and does not promise
A self-locking screw mechanism will hold a static load, which covers the case people actually worry about: the car stops between floors when the supply fails, and it stays there until the machine is run again. It does not replace overload protection, it does not stop a car that is already moving, and it is not valid for every load direction or every wear state. A supplier who answers "the drive is self-locking, so it cannot fall" has answered one of four questions.
Thread geometry that holds
Low lead, sliding contact, moderate friction. The mechanism resists back-driving by geometry, so a power failure parks the car rather than releasing it.
- Fewer safety-relevant wearing parts
- Lower speed for the same motor
- Lubrication becomes a safety property, not just a comfort one
Brake-held drives
Steep lead or rolling contact. The mechanism can be driven backwards by the load, so a brake (or an equivalent device) carries the safety function.
- Higher speed and efficiency
- Brake wear and periodic verification
- Brake release behaviour on power failure has to be documented
04 · Thread and nut choices that decide efficiency and wear
Once the load path and the self-locking condition are clear, the specification narrows to a small number of decisions: thread profile, nut material, backlash and lubrication. None of them appears on a typical home-lift brochure, and all of them decide how the machine behaves in year five rather than on handover day.
| Property | Trapezoidal / acme (sliding) | Ball screw (rolling) | Roller screw (reference) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Efficiency per turn | Moderate — a large share of the motor's work becomes heat at the flank | High, because contact friction is small | High, between the two |
| Self-locking tendency | Usually self-locking at low lead | Normally not self-locking | Normally not self-locking |
| Holding the load on power failure | By thread geometry | Requires a brake | Requires a brake |
| Lubrication | Grease or oil film on the flank; interval defined by travel and load | Grease in the ball return; sensitive to contamination | Grease; smaller contact area |
| Wear mode | Gradual flank wear; backlash grows slowly | Ball and raceway fatigue; sudden if overloaded | Mixed |
| Noise and vibration | Steady low-frequency hum; sensitive to lubrication state | Quiet until a ball track degrades | Low |
| Typical home-lift role | The standard choice | Rare; a brake adds parts | Uncommon in lifts |
Nut material decides the wear story
The nut is the sacrificial part of the pair. Bronze nuts run against a hardened and ground steel screw and wear slowly and predictably; the flank contact area is large, so the load is spread and the surface survives millions of travel metres if it stays lubricated. Composite and plastic nuts run more quietly and tolerate drier conditions, but they carry lower loads and can deform if the machine is worked hard. Ball nuts reverse the trade: almost no sliding friction, but the balls and the return channels dislike dust and shocks, and their failure mode is faster than a bronze nut's gentle clearance growth.
Backlash, preload and why a lift is not a machine tool
Backlash is the free movement between nut and thread before load transfers. In a milling machine it is a positioning error that has to be removed with preload. In a lift it mostly shows up as a small step at the start of travel, and chasing it with heavy preload is a mistake: preload raises contact pressure, which raises wear and heat, which shortens the life of the nut you wanted to protect. A residential drive should be specified with a defined, measurable backlash and a defined end of life — not with "zero backlash".
Temperature, dust and lubrication-grade discipline
Friction coefficient is not a constant. It falls when the flank is well lubricated and rises when it is dry, dirty or cold — and both directions matter. A drier flank makes the self-locking margin larger and the machine noisier; a heavily lubricated flank makes it quieter and reduces the margin. That is why the lubricant grade belongs in the maintenance instructions, and why substituting an unlisted grease on site is a safety decision being made by accident. Dust behaves the same way: it abrades a sliding pair and can seize a rolling one.
05 · Wear, lubrication and what actually fails first
Sliding contact is the price of self-locking, and the price is paid on the thread flank. The number that makes this concrete is not the travel height but the sliding distance: for a screw with a 6 mm lead and a 30 mm pitch diameter, every metre the car rises makes the nut slide about 15.7 metres across the flank. A five-stop residential lift with 12 m of travel therefore accumulates roughly 190 m of sliding per full up-and-down cycle on that geometry, before any allowance for load. Wear is not caused by distance travelled so much as by distance travelled multiplied by the thread's appetite for sliding.
Where the wear actually happens
Three surfaces dominate. The thread flanks carry the load and slowly lose material, which shows up as growing backlash long before anything stops working. The thrust bearing that anchors the screw carries the axial force and ages with heat and load cycles, and so does the seal that keeps lubricant around it. The guide rails and their rollers or shoes see the off-centre loads and degrade with a different signature: a rougher ride rather than a looser fit. A useful maintenance plan treats those three separately, because they fail on different clocks.
What the lubrication schedule is really protecting
Lubricant on a self-locking thread does two jobs, and only one of them is comfort. The obvious job is reducing friction so the nut slides rather than scrubs, which keeps the drive quiet and slows flank wear.
The less obvious job is holding the friction coefficient inside the range the self-locking calculation assumed. A dry flank has more friction and a larger self-locking margin, but it wears quickly and sounds like it. An over-oiled flank is quiet and cool, but the margin shrinks.
That is why the approved lubricant and its interval are part of the safety case rather than a housekeeping detail — and why an automatic lubricator, or an oil reservoir that the nut dips into on every trip to the lowest landing, is worth having in a lift that few people will remember to grease.
The failure order worth designing against
In service, the sequence usually runs: lubricant film depletes, noise and heat rise, backlash grows, the ride becomes audible at the start of travel, and only then do positioning and levelling complaints appear. A check that measures backlash and listens at the same point of every cycle will catch all three stages. Waiting for a fault code means waiting for the last one.
0 of 6 checks selected
06 · Why travel, speed and capacity stop where they do
The published envelope of a screw-driven home lift is narrow compared with a traction machine, and the limits are not marketing decisions. Each of the three headline numbers has a mechanical cause, and recognising the cause tells you when a specification is credible and when it is a data sheet copied from another drive type.
Speed: one turn buys you the lead
Lifting speed is lead multiplied by nut revolutions per minute. A 6 mm lead at 25 revolutions per minute gives 150 mm per second — 0.15 m/s, which is the rated speed on our screw-driven product pages. To go faster you can raise the lead or raise the revolutions, and both cost something. A larger lead raises the lead angle and eats the self-locking margin; higher revolutions add motor power, gearbox losses and noise. For reference, a gearless traction home elevator on the same site is published at up to 200 ft/min, roughly 1 m/s — the same order of magnitude as the lead-to-speed arithmetic, and about six times a screw drive.
Travel: a long slender screw is a spring
A screw that carries thrust over 15 m behaves like a slender column. In compression it can buckle; in tension it stretches, and at high rotation it approaches a critical speed at which it starts to whip. Manufacturers manage this with larger diameters, intermediate supports, tensioned installation and lower revolutions — all of which cost space and money. The practical outcome is the published ceiling of around 15 m that appears on our screw-driven pages, alongside 2-10 stops on the multi-stop model. A quotation offering 30 m of screw-driven travel at 0.6 m/s is describing a different machine than the one in these parameter tables.
Capacity: flank pressure, not motor power
The load a screw-nut pair can carry is limited by how much pressure the contact surface tolerates and how much of it there is. Increase the load and you enlarge the nut, thicken the screw and harden the flank, which is how a range that starts near 500 kg reaches 5000 kg on the heavy models. Note what that means for buying decisions: capacity is priced in threaded metal, not in motor size. A machine advertised with a large motor and a small screw has bought speed, not lifting force.
The triangle you cannot have all of
Lead, self-locking margin and sliding wear are locked together. A small lead gives a secure self-locking angle, a slow car and a nut that slides a long way for every metre of travel. A large lead gives a faster car and less sliding per metre, but the load can back-drive the mechanism, so a brake enters the safety case. There is no thread geometry that is simultaneously fast, brake-free and lightly wearing. The bars below show the sliding side of that trade on a 30 mm screw: the same geometry that makes the machine slow is the one that asks the flank to work hardest.
07 · Where noise and vibration come from
Noise is the complaint that most often reaches a supplier after handover, and on a screw drive it has three distinct origins that call for three different responses. Separating them before specifying anything saves the argument later, because a drive that is quiet in one house can be loud in the next with the same equipment.
The contact itself
A sliding flank under load produces a steady low-frequency hum whose level tracks lubrication state and load. It gets louder as the film thins, which makes it an early warning rather than an annoyance.
The drive train and fit
Motor and gearbox tonal noise, backlash rattling at the start of travel, and loose fixings all appear in the same band. If the sound only occurs at the beginning or end of a trip, look at backlash and fixings before blaming the thread.
The building around it
Thin plasterboard, an unsupported rail bracket or a stairwell that acts as a duct will amplify a drive that is otherwise acceptable. Site fixes such as stiffening the rail fixing or breaking the sound path to a thin panel often do more than changing the machine.
On the equipment side, one workshop-level answer is to stop the thread from radiating sound in the first place. Our screw elevator wraps the screw in acoustic insulation material (a plastic-packed screw assembly), so the running surface is not exposed to the shaft or the room. Case notes on that build describe reduced operating noise and vibration rather than a different drive principle, which is the right way to read it: the mechanism is unchanged, the sound path is changed.
Three moments dominate the complaints: the first movement after a long idle period, the last half metre into a landing, and any trip with a full load. Those are exactly the moments when the lubricant film and the backlash have the least support, which is why a single listening check at each end of travel during commissioning is worth more than a noise figure alone.
08 · The safety envelope: what self-locking does not cover
A drive that holds its load without a brake removes one class of failure, and it is a large class: the car cannot sink between floors because the power went out. Everything else in a lift's safety case still has to be designed, purchased and inspected. Reading a specification as "self-locking, therefore safe" leaves four areas uncovered.
- It does not protect against overload. The thread will happily try to lift more than the machine was built for; overload protection detects that and stops the run.
- It does not control deceleration during a run. Geometry holds a parked car. A car already moving needs its own means of stopping, and an emergency stop button is the visible end of that chain.
- It does not guard the landing. Door interlocks, landing gates and the "do not enter the shaft" behaviour are separate functions on every lift, screw-driven or not.
- It does not stay true if the thread runs dry or wears. The margin is a property of the pair in its real condition, which is why lubrication and backlash belong in the maintenance record.
Our own screw-driven parameter tables list the station-level safety items as emergency stop, overload protection and safety gear, which is the same short list you should expect from any serious supplier. The useful negotiation is not about counting items; it is about asking which function each item performs, and which of the four gaps above is closed by what. A supplier who can answer that question in the language of the load path has understood the mechanism rather than memorised the brochure: what happens when the drive stops, what happens when the load exceeds the rating, and what holds the landing door closed.
09 · Site conditions that decide feasibility
The reason a screw-nut drive shows up in retrofit projects is that it asks less of the building than a traction machine: no separate machine room, and no deep pit to excavate. That advantage is real, and it is also the point at which most projects stop being a product question and start being a survey question. Four conditions decide whether a quotation stands, and all four can be measured before anything is ordered.
Floor space and the intended route
The footprint of a compact screw-driven cabin is small, and it still has to sit somewhere that people can enter and exit safely on every floor. Measure the clear opening at each landing, as well as the shaft, and check how a wheelchair or a delivery box turns into the car.
Pit and headroom
A screw drive avoids the deep pit that hydraulic and traction machines need. Headroom above the top landing still has to be confirmed against the model, and any existing floor recess or slab thickness decides whether the lowest landing can be built without cutting structure.
Structure for rails and screw
Guide rails transfer the off-centre loads into the building, and the screw's thrust bearing needs a reliable anchor. A stud wall that cannot take a bracket is a specification change, not an installation detail. Photographs of the intended wall, plus the wall build-up, are the fastest way to price this.
Power supply and environment
Our screw-driven equipment is published with single-phase 220 V 50 Hz supply, and some models accept AC or DC — the point to confirm is what the site already has. Outdoor or unheated installations also need the operating temperature range checked; the published range on one of our screw models is −10 °C to 45 °C.
A fifth condition sits behind all four: who maintains it. A screw drive rewards a simple, regular routine and punishes neglect with noise and a shrinking safety margin. If the building has no one who will record a backlash reading, choose a configuration that includes automatic lubrication, and write the lubricant grade into the handover documents rather than leaving it to whoever next opens the machine.
10 · Where a screw-nut drive earns its place
The mechanism's strengths map onto a specific set of applications: a load held by geometry, a small footprint, a low parts count and no hydraulic oil. Filter the list below by what you are building to see where the drive is a natural fit rather than a compromise.
Showing all 6 applications
Homes and villas
Low-rise residential travel with a car or an open platform, installed in an existing stairwell or against a wall. No machine room, minimal pit and modest power demand are why screw-driven lifts appear so often in retrofits.
Accessibility and platform lifts
Wheelchair platforms and shorter-travel accessibility lifts, where the screw drive's reliability in a compact footprint matters more than speed. This is the application that popularised the mechanism.
Small commercial interiors
Clinics, showrooms, mezzanine access and staff areas where a full lift shaft is not available. Travel is short and duty is light, which suits the drive's thermal and wear profile.
Stages, studios and equipment lifts
Slow, precise, load-holding movement of scenery, platforms and equipment — the self-locking thread is exactly the property a stage lift wants, because a power failure should freeze the rig, not drop it.
Industrial lifting columns and jacks
Screw jacks and worm-gear lifting systems are the industrial cousins of the same mechanism, used for aligning, raising and holding loads in wet or harsh environments where a hydraulic ram is unwelcome.
Machine tools and positioning axes
Here the drive usually appears in ball-screw form, prioritising efficiency and precision over self-locking. It is the same screw-and-nut idea, specified for the opposite objective.
Notice the pattern: the drive wins where travel is modest, duty is light and holding the load when the power is off is worth more than speed. Those conditions describe most residential, accessibility and small-commercial projects, and very few high-rise or high-throughput ones. When you see screwnut lifting systems recommended in a project that needs fast, tall, frequent travel, either the specification has been copied from a different drive, or the machine is carrying a brake and its own maintenance schedule.
11 · When a screw-nut drive is the wrong answer
An honest comparison has to name the cases where the mechanism loses. In those situations the project is not made worse by choosing another drive — it is made worse by choosing this one.
Screw-nut drive, when it fits
- Travel up to roughly 15 m, typically 2-5 stops in residential use
- Light to moderate duty with long idle periods
- A retrofit where no machine room and no deep pit are available
- A project that values holding the load on power failure above speed
Choose another drive, when
- Travel is well beyond 15 m, or the building has many stops
- Traffic is continuous: a hospital, hotel or office core with queues
- Speed above roughly 0.15 m/s is a hard requirement
- The environment is abrasive or the duty cycle is heavy and frequent
① A screw-driven machine quoted above the published travel ceiling, with no explanation of the supports and the larger screw that make it possible. ② A speed figure several times the rated 0.15 m/s with no brake, no larger nut and no wear calculation. ③ A "maintenance-free" claim on a sliding thread — the drive has fewer service items than a hydraulic machine, not none.
12 · What maintenance actually involves
Maintenance on this drive is cheap in parts and unforgiving in discipline. The routine is short, and it works only if it is actually performed and recorded; the sequence below is written so that each step produces a number or a note that the next inspection can be compared against.
Record the baseline, not just the pass
Write down the lubricant grade and quantity, the measured backlash at a named landing, the sound at both ends of travel and the rail fixing torques. Without a baseline, later readings cannot show a trend.
Restore the film on the flank
- Check the reservoir or lubricator level and look for water or grit
- Use only the specified grade — a substitute changes the self-locking margin
- Run one full cycle and listen at both ends
Measure backlash and check the load path
- Backlash at the reference landing, compared with the commissioning value
- Thrust bearing axial play and running temperature
- Rail brackets, fixings and door interlocks
- Emergency stop and overload protection functionally tested
Plan the nut, and keep the record
The nut is the sacrificial part. A defined backlash limit turns its replacement into planned work rather than an emergency, and the accumulating record is what makes the decision objective.
13 · Specifying: the inputs that decide your configuration
A screw-driven configuration is confirmed by a short list of measurements, and most of them can be taken with a tape measure and a photograph. Work through the list below before requesting a quotation: every item that is missing becomes an assumption in the price, and assumptions in threaded metal are expensive to correct later.
0 of 8 inputs ready
Two of those inputs are routinely underestimated. Travel height decides the screw diameter and whether intermediate support is needed, and the available structure decides whether the rail loads can be resolved without adding steel. Send photographs of the intended position with something for scale, and the answers stop being guesses on both sides.
14 · Cost and lifecycle: where the money goes
A screw-driven lift is occasionally the cheapest machine in a comparison and rarely the most expensive, and neither fact explains its lifecycle cost. What matters is that the drive's cost sits where you can see it. There is no hydraulic power unit, no oil to change and no piston seal to replace; on the other side, the nut is a wearing part by design, so money that would have gone into hydraulic servicing is spent on the thread pair instead.
- The machine itself — threaded metal, nut, thrust bearing, drive train and controller. Capacity is bought here, and so is the thread form.
- The building work — pit and machine room avoided, but fixings, rail brackets and structure may still be needed. This block is where retrofits differ most from new builds.
- Installation time — a compact modular unit suits short programmes, which is part of the drive's attraction in occupied buildings.
- Ownership over ten years — lubrication discipline, nut replacement at a defined backlash limit, and no hydraulic consumables.
Published third-party figures are worth reading as a shape rather than a number. A lift supplier in the United Arab Emirates notes that screw-driven home lifts sit in the mid range of purchase prices while offering a lower lifetime cost, and an Australian price survey lists enclosed through-floor lifts of two to three stops between roughly USD 31,000 and 55,000 — a band that covers both hydraulic and screw-drive machines. Both observations point the same way: the purchase price does not separate the drive families cleanly, but the ten-year cost does, because the maintenance profiles are different.
15 · FAQ: the questions buyers ask before specifying
What exactly is a screwnut lifting system?
A car or platform carried by a threaded screw and a driven nut, with no suspension ropes and no hydraulic oil. The load rests on the thread flank, which is why the drive can hold its position without a brake when the thread is self-locking.
Does the car really stay put when the power fails?
On a self-locking thread pair, yes — the geometry holds a static load with no motor torque. That answers the parked-car case only. Overload protection, emergency stop and landing door interlocks are separate functions, and the margin depends on the thread staying lubricated and within its backlash limit.
Why is the speed limited to about 0.15 m/s?
Because speed is lead multiplied by nut revolutions, and both are constrained. A larger lead erodes the self-locking margin; higher revolutions cost power, noise and heat. Our screw-driven product parameter tables list 0.15 m/s as the rated speed, and that figure is a consequence of the mechanism rather than a missing option.
How much travel height can a screw-driven lift cover?
Our screw-driven pages are published up to 15 m, with 2-10 stops on the multi-stop model. Beyond that, the screw behaves increasingly like a slender column and needs larger diameter, support and lower revolutions. Ask any supplier quoting much more for the supports and the screw size that make it possible.
Do I need a pit or a machine room?
No machine room, and no deep pit of the kind a hydraulic machine needs. Headroom above the top landing and the build-up of the lowest floor still have to be confirmed against the chosen model, which is why the site checklist on this page asks for both.
What maintenance does the drive actually need?
Lubrication on the thread at the specified grade and interval, a periodic backlash reading compared with the commissioning baseline, thrust bearing checks, rail fixings, door interlocks and a functional test of the emergency stop and overload protection. Faults appear as noise and growing backlash long before the lift stops working.
Can a screw-driven lift be installed outdoors?
Some models are published for indoor or outdoor installation, with an operating temperature range — one of our screw-driven models is listed at −10 °C to 45 °C. Outdoor use makes lubrication condition and water ingress the deciding maintenance questions, so confirm the grade and interval for the site rather than for the catalogue.
Is an ISO 9001 certificate the same as a lift safety certification?
No. ISO 9001 certifies a quality management system, meaning how consistently the supplier works, not the compliance of a particular lift with a lift standard. Ask separately which standard a certificate for the product is issued against, and which body issued it, before treating any mark as product compliance.
16 · What to send us to confirm a configuration
Send the eight inputs from section 13 (travel, stops, load, floor openings, footprint, headroom, structure and power) and we will come back with the drive, screw and nut configuration the project actually supports, together with the maintenance routine that keeps the self-locking margin valid. If you are comparing a screw-driven quotation with a hydraulic or traction proposal, include the other specification; the useful conversation is usually about which drive suits the building, and that comparison is easier to have with both documents on the table.
Confirm the drive before you confirm the price
Send your travel height, stops, rated load and photographs of the intended position. We manufacture screw-driven home and commercial lifts from 500 kg to 5000 kg with travel up to 15 m, and we will tell you when a different drive is the better answer.
Where to read next
If you want the mechanism in more detail first, the related pages below cover the drive family from other angles: how the screw-driven lift is built, how it compares with hydraulic equipment, and the models that carry these parameters.
- How screw driven elevators work: safety, efficiency and simplicity
- What is a screw driven elevator?
- Wrapped screw with plastic packing and noise reduction
- Hydraulic residential elevators vs screw-driven elevators
- Choosing between traction, hydraulic and screw-driven home elevators
- Custom screw-driven elevator for homes — up to 10 stops and 15 m
- Small residential elevator, 500 kg to 5000 kg load
- Compact quiet screw-drive home elevator
- Safe compact screw-driven home elevator, 400 kg
latest company news
Mail Us
