GB989859A - Multiple storey garage - Google Patents

Abstract

989,859. Mechanical garages. STAHLWERKE SUDWESTFALEN A.G. Sept. 14, 1962 [Sept. 15, 1961], No. 35159/62. Heading B8E. In a multistorey garage of the kind in which a vehicle is placed on a trolley 4 at the entrance b and is taken, still on the trolley, by a lift 1 to a selected storage site adjacent the lift shaft, each floor has at least one storage site with space for two or more cars on the same side of the lift and the trolleys are equipped for coupling together so that a trolley being moved between the lift and the immediately adjacent storage space of a multi-space site can be coupled to a second trolley for simultaneous movement of the latter between the said space and the neighbouring space on the same site. At the entrance b a vehicle is driven up a ramp 3, Fig. 2 (not shown), on to a waiting trolley which rests on two parallel beams 7 which, after the vehicle has been moved, can be swung away to allow another trolley from the basement store f to be positioned. The loaded trolley 4 is taken into the lift by operation of an hydraulic actuator 13, Fig. 5, which moves a carrier 18 in the lift towards the trolley 4. A projection 24 from an endless chain mounted on the carrier 18 then engages a mating projection on the trolley and the chain and hydraulic actuator are operated to move the trolley. At the selected storage site the trolley is run off and if the site comprises two or more car spaces and the space adjacent the lift is occupied, the entering trolley pushes the trolley already present to the next space on that site. When the two trolleys contact each other, spring catches 27, Fig. 8, on the undersides of the trolleys automatically couple them together. In retrieval, the two or more coupled trolleys move together until one of them is in the lift at which point a release lever 31 for the catch 27 of the leading trolley is operated by a fixed trip member 30, Fig. 5, in the parking site to release the coupling. If the trolley to be retrieved is not the leading trolley, it will be necessary to store the latter temporarily while the required trolley is removed. To facilitate this the lift 1 is multitiered, e.g. for the system of Fig. 1 in which there are two parking spaces on every site the lift has two superimposed compartments 32, 33 each with a platform carrier 18 so that one of these can remove and temporarily store the leading platform from a storage site and the other be subsequently used to retrieve the second platform on that site. Other arrangements than that of Fig. 1 are possible and examples (Figs. 12 to 14, not shown) are given. In these alternative arrangements there may be single-space storage sites on one side of the lifts and multi-space sites on the other; in system using more than one lift, two lifts may serve a three-or-more-space parking site located between them. In one embodiment (not illustrated) there is a single lift rotatable about a vertical axis and a plurality of parking sites surround it.