GB960377A - Improvements in or relating to storage systems especially applicable to garaging automobiles or for operating in conjunction with stores or warehouses - Google Patents

Abstract

960,377. Selective retrieval storage systems. ELECTRIC & MUSICAL INDUSTRIES Ltd. Jan. 27, 1961 [Jan. 29, 1960], No. 3358/60. Heading B8E. In a storage system the stored items are conveyed to and from store by one or more transporters movable along fixed guideways which are so arranged that some of the guideways intersect at least one other guideway substantially at right angles. The transporters are operated by remote control and in each storage or retrieval the appropriate transporter movements, once initiated, are carried out automatically. The invention is applied to a multi-storey mechanical garage housed in a building (Fig. 1, not shown) consisting of several independent sideby-side sections, each section having an entry and an exit and two lifts. On the ground floor of each section a vehicle is driven through an entrance 10, Fig. 2, past traffic lights 14 on to an inlet road 4 leading to a first lift 11, the vehicle being engaged at some point along this road by one of a plurality of trolleys movable along the guide rails 20, 21. The lights 14 are operated to allow the vehicles to enter in batches of up to five and engagement of a vehicle by a trolley takes place at a point on road 4 adjacent to one of the stations 15 to 19. The trolleys are operated in conjunction with the lift 11 to ensure that each of a set of five vehicles goes to one of the five lift compartments A to E of Fig. 7. On each of the aboveground storage floors, a trolley emerging from the left 11 travels along a transit track 80, Fig. 3, and thence via one of the cross-tracks 83 to 94 to a selected storage location adjacent the selected cross-track. Unloading of a stored vehicle is by a like sequence of operations, but using lift 12 and outlet road 9, Fig. 2. The electrically powered trolleys are remotely controlled by selective energization of the tracks on which they run and of contact bars (not shown), a set of which is located between the tracks at each track junction and at each storage location. Motive power is supplied to the trolleys through its wheels and other trolley operations as described below are initiated when pick-up shoes on the trolleys engage the energized contact bars. The complete series of operations necessary to store or retrieve a vehicle can thus be set up remotely so that a trolley will automatically follow them. Each of the trolleys (Figs. 5a and 5b) has two sets of wheels one, 53 to 56, for the transit tracks and the other, 57 to 60, for the crosstracks. One set of wheels is normally raised above the tracks and hydraulic means are provided to lower this set and raise the other. This wheel operating mechanism, the trolley brakes and means for picking up or discharging a vehicle are all electrically operated at the required places by the above-mentioned energized contact bars through the shoes, such as 61, on the trolley. The vehicle pick-up and discharging means may be a platform 51 raisable from an initial position below the vehicle to an elevated position in which the vehicle is supported clear of the ground, the elevation and subsequently lowering being hydraulically powered but electrically initiated in response to energization of the appropriate trolley shoes. The vehicles may be driven, at the entry, on to trays each of which is carried by a trolley to the storage location and there unloaded with the vehicle on it. An alternative form of trolley has a width less than that of a vehicle and is equipped with laterally extensible wheel-engaging members.