Space-Saving Semicircular Elevator | 6-Floor Personnel Lift

The space a semicircular car actually takes

These blocks give the car's capacity and the floors it serves; they publish no plan dimensions for it. What can be said without a figure is the geometry, and that decides whether a curved car helps in your corner or merely looks different.

Why the back of this car is an arc

A semicircular car is a half disc in plan. One edge is straight — the chord — and the door is fitted along it, so that face is the door line; the rest of the outline is the arc that forms the back of the car. Take the frontage as W, the width of the door face:

• The depth is half the frontage. A half disc of frontage W has a radius of W/2, which is the depth from the door line to the back of the arc.
• The plan area is about 0.39 W²: half the area of a circle of diameter W, which is πW²/8.
• A full round car of the same frontage needs the whole diameter. Depth W and a plan area of about 0.79 W² — twice both.
• A rectangular car of the same frontage and depth covers 0.5 W² — about 27% more floor area, and the extra is the two back corners.

What the 27% buys

The floor area a half disc gives up is not lost; it stays in the room. Where the car stands against a curved wall, in the angle of an L-shaped hall, or beside a stair, that space keeps the room reading as one volume instead of a box dropped into it. The outline behind the car can stay curved too.

The door is on the flat face, and that decides more than the curve

Because the car is a half disc rather than a circle, the landing side is a straight line: door, frame, call button and walkway are all set out square. Three things follow.

• The approach has to reach the flat face — the only face a door can be fitted to.
• What stands in front decides the walkway. The width left in front of the face is a measurement, not an assumption.
• The door position is fixed on the drawing, because every landing opening is cut to it.

Those three rows are geometry, not this model's dimensions: its car plan and radius are not published in its blocks. Whichever shape the plan takes, 400 kg, 0.6 m/s and six floors are unchanged, because they belong to the machine rather than to the outline of the car.

Six floors, five runs, and what 0.6 m/s means in seconds

The block gives the number of floors, not the height between them, so the height is where your own measurement goes. A run between two landings is the floor-to-floor height divided by 0.6 m/s. At three common heights, with five runs for six floors:

• 2.8 m floor to floor: about 4.7 s of motion per run, so about 23 s over five runs.
• 3.0 m floor to floor: 5.0 s per run, so 25 s over five runs.
• 3.5 m floor to floor: about 5.8 s per run, so about 29 s over five runs.

Those figures are arithmetic on this model's published speed and an assumed floor height, not published travel times. Door opening, the walk in, door closing and the call are added on top, and in a low-rise lift the door is the larger half of a journey.

What the drawing has to fix

Four dimensions decide whether this car belongs in your plan, and all four arrive on the drawing. They are the car's plan and radius, the door position on the flat face, the outline of the space, which may stay curved, and the clear walkway in front of that face. The curved lifts elsewhere on this site are separate products with their own figures: the circular glass lift is a full round car and the capsule elevator is a different outline again.

Key figures for a 400 kg personnel lift over six floors

Ten rows, each read from this model's own blocks. The shape is a half disc and the naming follows it: the same car is also called a horseshoe elevator, and the product is filed as a 6 floor personnel lift. Switch the units if your drawings work in imperial.

Every value above is stated on this page's own blocks; nothing is inferred from another model, and no gap has been filled.

Which of these figures moves a project to another model

Load rarely does: a building buying a personnel lift already knows what it is moving, and 400 kg covers staff and guests comfortably. The figure that sends an enquiry elsewhere is the number of levels, because it is counted rather than estimated. Counting the landings the lift has to reach catches mezzanines and half-levels added after the drawings were issued. The second is the plan.

What is deliberately not in this table

Five figures a buyer will eventually need are absent, and it is better to name them than to leave them to be discovered at the end. The car's plan, its radius and the clear size inside it are not published here; nor are the shaft or space clear size, the pit depth, the headroom above the top landing, or the door's clear opening.

Two absences matter for the same reason: the blocks carry no certification row, so no certification, standard number or class is claimed on this page, and no maintenance interval is published, so no service schedule is promised. What is stated is the 1 year warranty line.

Shaft and structure: what the building has to give

A traction lift runs between guide rails that have to be fixed to something solid, through a vertical run that has to stay clear from the lowest landing to the highest. These blocks say nothing about the shaft, so this section is a method rather than a set of figures: three readings, then the questions the structural side answers on the drawing.

Three readings that decide the space

What the structural side answers on the drawing

• How the guide rails are fixed, and to what. A half-disc car still runs on straight rails set out on square lines; the backing they need is a structural question rather than a shape question.
• Whether the floor at the lowest level takes the loads. The machine and the car put loads into the structure, and those figures belong to the drawing rather than to this page.
• Whether the vertical run stays clear. Services crossing the space are cheaper to divert while the design is open than after the rails are in.

Two things these blocks do not settle

The first is the enclosure: a space left inside a building and a purpose-built shaft arrive at the same lift from different directions, and which applies is read off your plan. The second is where the machine and the controller stand. Neither is published for this model, so neither is claimed here.

No pit depth, headroom, shaft clear size or structural loading figure is given anywhere on this page, because none is published in this model's blocks. They depend on the door position, the plan and the structure you can offer, and they arrive on the approval drawing.

One point of naming, because the shapes look similar at a glance: the circular glass elevator on this site is a full round car with its own figures, and the panoramic pitless model is a different construction again. The shaft notes above are written for this car and are not transferred to those pages.

Supply and drive: one phase, a VVF inverter, a microcomputer controller

The block states one electrical arrangement — 220 V, 50 Hz, single phase — and two pieces of electronics that go with it: a VVF operating system and a microcomputer control system. Between them they are the difference between a machine that simply starts and stops and a lift nobody thinks about.

What a single-phase arrangement means for the building

Single phase is what most finished buildings already have at or near the position, which is why it is the arrangement stated here. It changes the cable rather than the lift: one live conductor, one neutral and earth.

From supply to ride

The inverter takes the incoming supply, rebuilds it at a frequency it can vary, and feeds the gearless machine from that. Varying the frequency changes the motor's speed, which is why a VVF drive accelerates along a ramp, holds 0.6 m/s and decelerates along a ramp of the same kind. The controller decides calls, levelling and door timing, and notices when a landing stops arriving level.

What to send about the supply

Three readings turn the electrical side into a drawing. First, the voltage measured where the unit will stand, with normal load on rather than at the board. Then where a dedicated circuit can be fed from, including the route through a finished interior. Last, where the isolation point can sit and stay reachable without entering the car.

Nothing on this page states a current, a cable size, a breaker rating or a power figure, because this model's blocks publish none of them. They belong on the electrical drawing that comes with the quotation.

Cabin and door: stainless steel, an LED ceiling, a door on the flat face

The block names one cabin material — stainless steel — one ceiling type, an LED panel, and an automatic door. It names no other finish for this car, so no other finish is offered on this page; the finish charts of other models in this range belong to their own pages.

Why one cabin material suits this car

Stainless steel is the material a lift car is asked to survive: hands, trolleys, luggage, cleaning fluids and a decade of all of them. A brushed panel reads as equipment rather than furniture, which is honest for a personnel lift that carries staff and guests through a working building as well as a house.

On a curved car the same material has a second advantage. Panel joints follow the arc rather than closing a rectangle, so the cladding is set out radially and the curve is drawn by the panels themselves. That is what keeps a semicircular elevator cabin reading as part of the room rather than as a box parked in it.

The description filed with this record calls the outline panoramic, which is a fair reading of a curved plan. From inside, the sight line past the door is longer and the walls fall away instead of meeting in two corners. A curved plan is a panoramic personnel elevator in the sense of the outline and the sight line; it is not a claim about glazing, because this block specifies a stainless steel cabin and says nothing about glass here.

The car as delivered

Tap to enlarge

What the door decides, and what it does not

The door is the part every passenger touches, and on this car it comes with the shape rather than separately from it. Because it opens on the flat face, the landing works like any straight landing: the frame is square to the wall, the call button sits beside it at normal height, and the walkway does not curve round anything. The block does not give the clear opening, and that figure follows from the plan and from what has to travel through it.

The cabin material does not change what the machine does: 400 kg, 0.6 m/s and six floors apply whatever the panels are made of, because those figures come from the drive and the suspension.

Safety and handover: one named device, ten things to check

The block names the emergency stop button as this model's safety system. That is one device, worth saying plainly rather than borrowing a longer list from another model: no second device, and no certification, is claimed here.

What the emergency stop button does

It is a manual cut-out inside the car. Anyone travelling can stop the machine deliberately, without waiting for the controller to agree, which makes it the one piece of safety equipment an untrained passenger can operate. Two details are worth checking rather than assuming: that the reset clears the stop cleanly, and that the button is within reach of a person seated in a wheelchair.

Where the rest of the protection is confirmed

A traction lift of this class carries supervision of speed, load and the door zone, and the electrical protection that goes with the drive. This block does not enumerate those items, so this page does not either. What is certain is where the list lives: the schedule of what is fitted to your unit belongs on the approved drawing and the commissioning record, to be read before the handover visit rather than after it.

Handover checklist, in the order to walk it

Ten checks, arranged the way a handover visit runs: outside the car, then the door, then the ride, then the paperwork. Tick them on the page and the list stays in your browser.

Acceptance is a measurement, not a signature

Two of the ten are most often waved through. Levelling should be made from both directions at every landing: a car that settles level from below and slightly out from above has a ramp that is not yet right, which is a controller setting rather than a shaft defect. The emergency stop should be pressed and reset in front of the person accepting the lift.

This model's blocks carry no certification row, so this page claims no certification, no standard number and no class. The declarations that apply to your market come with the quotation and are handed over at commissioning, which is what the last check above is there to confirm.

From sketch to first ride, in order

An installation goes wrong for one of two reasons: the space on site was built to different numbers from the machine, or the supply was assumed instead of measured. Both are prevented before the order is placed, which is why the sequence below starts with a tape measure.

1. 1. Survey and approval drawing

   Floor-to-floor height at every landing, the plan available for the car, which face the walkway reaches, and the supply measured at the position. These become an arrangement drawing: car outline and radius, the door position on the flat face, the machine position and the supply route. Nothing is ordered from the survey alone — the drawing is the first artefact, and every later step is checked against it.

2. 2. The decisions that get fixed on the drawing

   Three answers settle here: where the door sits on the flat face, how much of the plan the car takes, and how the supply reaches the machine. Each is cheap to change now and expensive afterwards, because all three are cut or drawn into the unit and the shaft.

3. 3. Manufacture

   The commercial block puts delivery at 40 working days, with a minimum order of 1 set and payment by T/T or L/C. The period starts from the approved drawing, which is why steps 1 and 2 sit in front of it.

4. 4. Packing and shipment

   Packing is an export non-fumigation wood box: the crate protects the curved panels and the door assembly, and clears the rules timber packing has to satisfy in many destinations. Supply ability in the same block is 5 sets per month. Worth planning now: where the crate will be opened, because a crate delivered into a finished lobby is unpacked where it lands.

5. 5. Site preparation, by the building side

   The space is prepared to the approved drawing: the opening formed at each landing, the plant position ready, the supply run to the isolation point, and a route from the delivery point cleared. It belongs to the building rather than the lift, and it most often decides whether installation runs to plan.

6. 6. Installation, commissioning and handover

   Rails, machine, suspension, car, door and the control cabinet are installed and adjusted, then the unit is run loaded and empty with the level of each landing checked from both directions. The handover visit walks the ten checks in the previous section.

What the building has to have ready before the crate arrives

Five things, in any order, but all five before installation starts. Each is the difference between one visit and three.

• A space formed to the approved drawing. The opening at each landing is cut to the door position fixed in step 2, not to the one discussed first.
• A clear route from the unloading point. The crate is large and the curved panels are finished surfaces, so a doorway that is too narrow is better found before delivery.
• The supply run to the isolation point. Measured rather than assumed, and wired for the arrangement chosen at step 2.
• A machine position that can be reached for service. Whoever maintains the unit has to stand in front of it, so that space is designed rather than discovered.
• A decision about who installs. The installation scope is agreed in the quotation and divided before anyone books a date.

Upkeep, and what the 1 year warranty actually covers

This model's block states a 1 year warranty. That is the only maintenance or service figure published on this page, and it deserves to be read precisely. Running costs are decided less by the length of a warranty than by what the drive asks for once the period ends.

Three habits that keep a lift out of trouble

• Keep the landing approach clear. Whatever supervises the door zone is watching the opening, and a trolley parked half over it turns an ordinary arrival into a repeating cycle.
• Keep the sill and door track clean. Grit in the sill is the commonest cause of a door that starts to hesitate, and a steel car with a hard floor sweeps out in seconds.
• Respect the load plate. 400 kg is a load rather than a passenger count.

What to ask for with the quotation

Three documents make the difference between owning a lift and managing one. The first is the recommended maintenance schedule, since none is published here. The second is the spare-parts list, with the parts worth holding locally. The third is the test reports and declarations that apply to your market, since this model's blocks carry no certification row.

Everything in this section is either stated in this model's own blocks or is named as something to ask for. No service interval, response time, certification or parts holding is claimed on this page.

Ten questions buyers ask about this model

Answered from this page's own blocks. Where a question needs a figure the blocks do not publish, the answer says where it comes from rather than filling the gap.

What to send, and what comes back

Nine items turn an enquiry into a drawing, and eight of them are things you already know or can measure in one walk round the building. The ninth is the one most enquiries leave out, and it is the one that changes the drawing most.

Why the ninth item is the one that changes the drawing

The first eight are measurements and preferences, and each one narrows the machine. The last narrows the plan. An enquiry that arrives with floor heights and a supply reading but nothing about the space behind the car comes back with a question, because whether the outline can stay curved decides how much of the plan the car takes.

What comes back, and in what order

First the arrangement drawing, because it answers what this page deliberately leaves open. It carries the car outline and radius, the door position on the flat face, the machine position, and the dimensions these blocks do not publish: pit, headroom, clear car size and clear shaft size.

Then the decisions that have to be fixed before manufacture: the door position at every landing, the extent of the curved outline, and the supply arrangement. Once those are confirmed the order is written and the 40 working days begin. The load you sent is checked against 400 kg (882 lb) at the same time.