Slashdot Mirror
Vacuum-Controlled Elevator Developed
Aenox writes "Vacuum Elevators of Florida have released a one-man elevator system that easily slots into buildings. It has gone on sale in the U.S. for around $20,000 and uses only electricity to power vaccum-inducing suction turbines that can lift 204Kg several floors up. They claim it provides a smooth ride but from the video it looks like it could use some oil."
But O'Connor adds that a series of mechanical breaks will activate should there be a sudden loss of pressure, to prevent the capsule falling.
I'm glad to see this because this was my first thought on watching the video. I can imagine all sorts of overly dramatic Hollywood type scenarios...... Cut the power to the building.....drama ensues. Or, a couple of well placed bullets into the side of the plexiglas causing a sudden implosion and dramatic falling of the lift. Also, one would want to ensure there are no leaks from the capsule to the inside of the lift tube. That sort of thing could play havoc on your eardrums, sinuses and eustachian tubes. Ask anyone who has been in a plane when they open a cargo door before completely equalizing the pressure in the cabin...... Wow, talk about uncomfortable.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Does NewScientist.com have editors?
Call me picky, but if you're doing a professional publication, there are some standards you ought to uphold.
But O'Connor adds that a series of mechanical breaks will activate should there be a sudden loss of pressure, to prevent the capsule falling.
Well. this certainly doesn't sound promising. I would think that in the event of a sudden loss of pressure, the elevator would 'break' quite satisfactorily on its own, without the need for additional mechanical help.
The elevator costs between $20,000 and £22,000.
That's actually quite a large price range, once you figure out the exchange rate.
Clearly someone over at NewScientist.com is asleep at the switch. The sad fact is that this is nothing new....even sadder is the fact that this sort of thing is now acceptable, even in professional publications.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
The elevator costs between $20,000 and £22,000.
Sweet. My new Prius gets between 812448 RPH and 48 MPG. I think I've saved enough on gas to get one of these...
Futurama here we come!
Have you metaroderated recently?
30kbps...25...20... We are witnessing the dreaded /. effect, ladies and gentlemen! Quite a sight indeed! If you look far off into the west, you can see the mushroom clouds from the server hosting the file...
it really sucks :)
-- "If A equals success, then the formula is A=X+Y+Z. X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut." - Einstein
...in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate factory. The design will have to be scaled up to allow occasional use by gluttonous Germans.
Cause I have an ol' ball and chain that would be interested. She'd also be interested if the said elevator can clean stains and grill up a smarmy husband like a rotisserie.
the world's largest penis pump. Good grief, I can't believe I just said that.
Rick : I think Richard Harrelson has them.
Mr. Johnson : Get Richard in here NOW !
Zoooooooof - plop
Yeah, let's post a 3.2 MB video link directly from the blurb...
Why?
"Joy is contagious," he said, peering into the microscope.
It seems there's no shield between the occupant and the sides of the stationary tube.
If that is true there could be risks if stuff (like clothing) gets caught at the wrong places... Not very high I suppose - it's just like using an escalator - if you careless/stupid enough to get something caught you better hope it rips rather than you rip...
All the pneumatic pumps I've used are maddeningly noisy. I hope this one's an exception.
Is it bagless? Cos I wouldn't want it to run out of suction...
To be honest.. I think someone should invent a lift that sucks the fart smells out before the next person gets in..
... 204 Kg = ~450 lbs
I think I think, therefore I think I am.
http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000810042014/
What do you mean by page-widening? I've looked at the top two posts on your list and neither causes anything unusual to happen on my browser (firefox 1.0) until I've made the window so small the standard slashdot header doesn't fit correctly. What's the problem with these posts exactly (other than the offtopic/trollish content)?
There are only 96 people in the US that it can actually lift....
oops make that 74, McDonalds are doing an all you can eat special today.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
OP is repeated troll. Those aren't comments on stories.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
Use your imagination... sad, but true.
Simpy
Laziness and status aside;
The real answer is for the Elderly and the disabled. IF you check out That Home Site you'll find a lot of interest in residential elevators. If it isn't feasible to buy a single level house, an elevator allows you full access to your entire abode.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
These links point to the slashdot barfbag "trolltalk." Naturally it's full of trolls. Don't waste your mod points there. Mod parent down instead.
amazing the amount of work people will do in order to avoid physical exercise
is it any wonder that the current generation are expected to die before their parents
I think that the slashdot posted link already used up all the site's bandwidth.
Working videos (for now) here:
http://www.vacuumelevators.com/video.htm
http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/57f25325e90c9c744 b4fb63364a65d46/index.html/
5 0db48a61bc5c74f/Elevator1.mpeg/
http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/9c88d25a2a2d1538
It looks like their servers could use some oil, too.
You stopped one post too soon--check out the third link.
Don't mention Engadget on /.! We hates the engadgets!
/. and the only way to settle our differences is to meet on the field of nerd honor with dueling keyboards at dawn.
Everyone knows that if Engadget is the mortal enemy of
"looks like it could use some oil."
Look like thier server could use some oil.
I'm going to take a guess and say because Firefox isn't a media player. It's a standard mpeg, played fine in Winamp after launching the link from firefox.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
An elevator that is sucked up a tube... I can feel my ears popping just thinking about it.
Next time when you post link to a video, can you point it to Coral Cache instead? It makes the link available to more readers and makes the webmaster there happier.
I once had a signature.
The primary market for residential elevators is for the elderly and wheelchair bound. From what I can see, this elevator isn't stable or safe enough for a frail elderly person, and it isn't large enough to fit a wheelchair or scooter.
So the only market for this thing is going to be for rich people who'd rather blow money on a toy than take the stairs. While I'm sure there's a market for that, it's not going to be a big one.
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
That's why this post above yours linked to the mirrodot mirror of the video.
How to use coral cache: http://slashdot.org.nyud.net:8090/~oscartheduck
Mirrordot mirror for the video mentioned:4 8a61bc5c74f/Elevator1.mpeg
http://mirrordot.org/stories/9c88d25a2a2d153850db
Dependency hell? =>
I reckon the intent putting classical music in the video is to distract customers of the sound of the pumps? Found it nowhere on their page.
I certainly do not want a 120dB monster of an elevator in my home/business/whatever.
Meme of the day: I browse "Disable Sigs: Checked". So should you.
And you gets a turbolift!
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Half arsed attempt at a troll - check the links, they go to a valid discussion.
for my Grandmother whose mobility was starting to wane. It was powered by water pressure (from a regular tap (faucet)) on the way up with a valve controlling the water release for a smooth ride down. I have always wondered how it was able to provide enough lift (it still puzzles me today). Regular water pressure? I must take my camera next time I venture there. He's a metal-worker by trade (specifically I'm not sure) so the quality of the structure is first class.
SOmething's really odd here -- the people who would most need this are folks who are in wheelchairs. And yet the tube is clearly too narrow for any sort of handicapped person. Why invent a freaking elevator for the people who don't need one? Do they have a handicapped version? Looking at the size of the capsule, I doubt a person with arm braces could fit in there. It seems really cruel to make an easy-to-install elevator that won't fit the people who need it.
They claim it provides a smooth ride but from the video it looks like it could use some oil
Hmm I guess this elevator really sucks then...
Thanks, I'm here until Wednesday, try the veal!
http://www.titaniumtorrents.com/torrents-details.p hp?id=26
Direct Link http://www.titaniumtorrents.com/download.php?id=26 &name=Vaccum%20elevators.torrent
She's gone from suck to blow!
I hope the elevator works better than there servers.
"Service Unavailable"
is a bad idea because it is already Slashed. Perhaps submitters should reward those who actually read the article by not including the video in the description. Not to whore, but here is the mirrordot mirror of the video. It is pretty slow moving, but the ride looks really smooth.
I don't keep a lid on my coffee so when I walk around I look busy -me
news flash:
elevators don't run on guinea pig droppings. All modern elevators (excepting perhaps the Space Elevator) run on ONLY electricty.
Did I miss something here?
The truth about Led Zep should never be told on
What happens if you open the door when the elevator is not on that floor? It looks like it would open right up. If that is the case, what would happen if you opened the door, and by accident dropped something into the tube? Would it get sucked up by the fan and blow out the system? Do the doors lock when the capsule isn't on that floor? (sorry for two posts in two minutes; my friend and I just got to discussing this sweet contraption)
I don't keep a lid on my coffee so when I walk around I look busy -me
He stole my story I tried to post yesterday, and I had a better tag line too:
2005-05-06 18:01:29 Elevator from Futurama! (Hardware,Technology) (rejected)
and a better description.
This elevator comes in 2 modes: 2 floor mode and a 3 floor mode. It is easy to install, you only need to make a round hole in the floor/ceiling and put the round tube-shaft through it. It works by pumping the air out of the tube from the top (a pump generates 87dBA of noise,) and since the pressure underneath the cabin stays the same, the cabin goes up.
Safety is guaranteed by a mechanical lock that stops the cabin dead in case if pressure under the cabin becomes weaker than the pressure from above. On the other hand if electricity cut off from the pump, the cabin wouldn't get stuck between the floors, it would slide down slowly due to slow pressure venting.
There is a clever cabin ventilation scheme...
anyway, this thing looks a lot like the mode of transportation used in Futurama and my last sentence was:
Now I wish someone came up with an american favorite Suicide Booth, then my day would be complete.
You can't handle the truth.
... of those things at the bank drive-up window that suck your money away?
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
Bullets won't be much a problem. The glass in this thing is the same thing they make bullet proof glass out of. Maybe not as thick, but it should still be enough. Even if not, this stuff won't shatter like glass, so the leak won't be as sudden.
~32 stone
I think this is a pretty neat idea, but how much would a regular elevator install cost. That could actually take multiple people and lots of stuff..
Dear pikine,
We editors no longer even care about Slashdot, much less some other site we link to. So shut up and buy a subscription.
Love,
Cowboyneal
Tristan, you're not going to get any usable help here, unless you give us usable information. Are you getting an error message of some sort?
Initially, I had trouble as well. I was getting a page that said "SERVICE UNAVAILABLE". It was not a problem on my machine, however. There were so many people trying to see the same video that the server could not keep up (Google for "slashdot effect"). I tried the mirror link that was posted elsewhere, and it worked fine. I am running Firefox on a Fedora core 3 machine and I am using mplayer to view the file. It works, no problems.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
I use the stairs. I even use the stairs when a hotel puts me on the 8Th floor.[1]
This is for some friends and relatives who can't take stairs. Have you seen what MS does to people? Ever see a 40 year old who cannot walk? It isn't pretty. Then there are general old people who can walk, but need help on stairs. I want an elevator in my house for them. Too bad this model isn't big enough for a wheelchair.
[1]If I can find ones that you can enter without setting off the fire alarm anyway. Back in school it was not an excused absence from your finals if you were trapped in an elevator for the test, as some of my fellow students discovered (rated capacity was 12 people, and there were 15. This was a 12 dorm). No I no longer take an elevator that is close to full.
...like it would really suck.
This is a great physics problem. What maximum pressure (in atm) must the vacuum chamber above have in order to lift a 200-lb man and a 200-lb elevator capsule? Assume 1 atm below, and a tube with 1 m diameter. Let's compare answers.
to be one of those canisters at the drive-in for your local bank... slurp, woosh, thonk!
...and uses only electricity to power vaccum inducing suction turbines
Not to be picky with regard to the article summary, but what the hell else did they think it was going to be powered with? Hamster wheels?
Imagine that! It uses only electricity! Our former model tried the hamster wheel approach, connected directly to the suction turbines. But this one is new and improved!
Sheesh...
He who has no
Probably the market most likely to buy an elevator for their home.
At a health fair in Canada, McDonalds was giving away samples of their new "healthy" fruit salad. The salad consisted of sliced apple and grapes, not too bad, but the sauce and the sprinkle-on walnuts were saturated with sugar! I finally realized what makes Americans so fat: everything they eat must be loaded with either sugar or oils, including their fruit and veggies.
While still a clever design, this is a giant step backwards because it does not provide positive position control. Vacumn just provides a force, not a means of controlling position. From the video it looked like he had to tweak the elevator position before he could open the door.
As for opening the door above the car while it's running, remember there is a vacumn holding the door shut with at least a few hundred lbf.
Nice troll... now go out and catch some fresh air :)
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
I heard they suck. pun pun
if you watched the video you would see this isnt marketed towards the handicapped but to rich/dumb office execs, if you look at the tube you would of seen there isnt enough room to open a newspaper never mind walkers/wheelchairs
but then again this is slashdot where people comment first before thinking about what they are actually saying (much like the current USA president (perhaps its a culture thing))
Thanks for that link. There are more videos there, downloads are fast, and the videos seem smoother than the one linked from the story.
Two- or three-floor versions are currently available, and the company is now developing a four-floor system and another that can accommodate a wheelchair.
Wheelchair support coming in a future patch!
Why do they use a vacuum instead of pressure? I can imagine that due to the round shape it is better to have a higher outside pressure instead of a low one (to distribute the force), but this should not be a technological problem (use stronger glass, reinforce...). Creating a vacuum sounds more difficult to me than creating pressure. On top of this, pressure can lift any load, while vacuum is restricted to the atmospheric pressure times the surface area of the floor.
That must be a conspiracy to force us poor overweight computer geeks to take the stairs!
It would seem to me that there's a limit to the amount of vacuum you can get above an elevator, but no limit in the pressure you could generate below it. I mean, if the elevator is 4 feet across, then the absolute theoretical limit of wieght that could be pulled up by suction (assuming standard sea-level pressure) would be...
interesting. Google can't parse:
(pi * ((inches in 1 foot * 2)^2) * psi in 1 atm) / lbs in 1 ton
but substituting in values, you get:
(pi * ((12 * 2)^2) * 14.6959488) / 2000 = 13.2965812
OK. I guess that's not so very strange after all. In a 4 foot wide elevator, you can lift 13 tons with a hard vacuum above it. Damn. 15psi sure does add up quick.
Pound! Bang! Bin! Bash! is this a shell script or a Batman comic?
I wonder what happends if that elevator stucks for some reason with a person inside it. Will he have anough air to breath while waiting for somebody to let him out? And wouldn't it be easier to build a similar regular elevator (without counterweight if dimension of that elevator must remain small), but with more common technology and without need of air tightneds..
A rather low resolution image is
Here
Probably a better example is Aloha Airlines flight 243, which looked a whole shitload worse.
Check out the picture on page 2
Only one fatality, which is kind of amazing if you look at the pictures (flight attendant blown out).
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
I'll have to patent this idea before SCO does...
No video. Now that sucks...
It would not take long to use up all of the oxygen in that little cylinder. I hope there's good passive ventilation when it gets stuck.
This company is from florida. As someone else stated before, a piston elevator would need a hole as deep as the elevator is high. When you are in florida, if you dig down, water comes out. This elevator is good for homes that cant dig for a pneumatic piston and cant have a huge pulley system to pull the elevator. They'll probably use it for two floor hotel suites and things like that.
by how slow this thing is? The one at the bank really rips along, and for the money, I want a FUN ride!
man, I feel like mold.
I hope that the elevator is engineered better than their web server.
They're missing out on a lot of customers right now that are trying to research these things.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
It looks like a one-man elevator: anyone ruled out by the weight limit wouldn't fit in the thing anyways...
...as I don't have any mod points right now.
I was at a mall once where a girl got a foot mangled. It's why the things have emergency stop buttons.
Basically, there are two major points of failure: between the side of each stair and the escalator wall, and more likely, at the end of the escalator where the stair slides under the floor.
It's possible for loose clothing (low hanging pant, shoe lace, etc) to get caught between the stair and housing, and pull in a limb. Another problem is small children who sit on th escalator and get things like drawstrings caught.
But don't take my word on it, how about the Consumer Product Safety Commission?
paintball
It seems like a really pointless bit of technology - i can understand that its main use is for places where you don't want to dig a shaft for a pneumatic lift and maybe don't have room for a motor on top and a counter weight, but this is just over the top! Ok so it has emergency breaks should the pressure fail, but cable lifts have always had very simple, very reliable locking mechanisms. If the door on an upper level is opened or its seal fails for some reason, the lift won't work. Seals like that don't last for ever. If the glass/plastic is broken for some reason you'll get a possibly hazardous implosion and if the roof of the cabin was to fail the person inside would suffer from explosive decompression. A simple motor and pulley is surely much more reliable and easier to maintain than a full scale vacume pump system? and as for control - well it didnt exactly look precise from that video, im not sure why the sucked-out air from the top was not fed into the bottom to make it a little more stable (it says the bottom is at atmospheric pressure, i guess it would mean building the tube to withstand low and high pressure. Making this lift any bigger (for more than 2 people) would seem like a big challenge, as would extending its range, so you have to ask the question: why would a lift company invest in a technology that was inherently restricted to a few floors and a couple of people (and barely a wheelchair)?? Why not take a cable lift and try and fit the whole package into something similar to this - they could keep the tube and have a fully circular counter-weight, which would look pretty cool. This technology doesn't seem to make sense unless you have a discount on turbines and plastic tubing, and clients who want to send non-wheelchair bound people up 2 floors one at a time...
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I guess that's the main question.
I bet this thing really sucks...
Was it me?>! Did i say it first?!
... Using a sentence fragment.
I agree with you, in this particular case. Although no one particularly cares about grammatical rules, which really are flexible, the article is just wrong. Breaks are very different from brakes, and dollars are not pounds. This isn't a small spelling/grammar issue, it's factual inaccuracy.
OK, fair is fair ...
I didn't give you all the facts.
When I tried to open the link in firefox i did get a service unavaible message, but if I used the magic "open in IE" plug in _on_the_same_link_, there was no problem at all to view the movie.
Tristan.
Thanks for the torrent
It is here. Obviously, /. killed the server.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
...you just stepped in and it sucked you up a floor, rather than having to stand in a casule. That would be impossible, but way cooler.
The company I work for is currently getting sued because somebody said they fell 2 floors. This can't happen. The cables were still attached to the counterweight so they would have pulled the elevator up through the roof in case of motor and brake failure. You can't fall, you can only crash through the roof like Willy fucking Wonka. The judge just threw his complaint out.
Now the question is, who had the cajones to fly the plane from Hawaii to Mojave? Safely landing the plane after the roof peeled off is one thing. It's quite another to get into an airplane whose fuselage has partially peeled away and fly it several thousand miles. Especially if most of the flight is over water. That took big brass ones in my book.
The article the grandparent references states that the plane was dismantled in Hawaii. Looking at the plane on the Mojave tarmac from about 1/2 a mile away, the plane looked intact - wings, fuselage etc. Perhaps someone who has seen the plane closer than that could comment.
So much for the top exit door. Pfffffffffffffoooomp!
30% off web hosting. Coupon code "SLASHDOT".
They are marketing an elevator with a max lift capacity of 450lbs that is too narrow for wheelchairs or someone holding a largee package, a baby or a pet, and that has a maximum lift of 32 feet if installed at sea level.
What an absolutly useless device!
Is it just me, or does that elevator resemble a bonge?
This elevator looks too small to accomodate a wheel chair. So, the only people who can use it are those who don't need it.
For the price of this elevator, you could install a full size elevator. I have used one elevator that I am told cost $30,000 to install and that included boring a vertical shaft and horizontal tunnel through the side of a mountain. For considerably less cost, you could build a single person elevator.
They claim that the elevator saves energy because it uses gravity on the descent. What they don't tell you is that it uses more than twice as much energy on the way up as a similarly sized elevator using the conventional counterweight design. A counterweight elevator only has to raise the weight of the occupants since the weight of the car is balanced out by the counterweight. Indeed, the counterweight might be as much as the weight of the car plus maximum occupancy load, in which case the elevator needs to use power to lower the car and only needs to release the brakes and overcome friction to raise. Futher, the inefficency of the vacuum pump could be considerable.
A hydraulic elevator of the size shown could also have been constructed using a cable or chain over a piston that travels half the distance as the elevator car (same design as used on many forklifts). This would be simpler, more reliable, and avoid the dynamic load problem described below. The design could be as compact and "portable" as the vacuum elevator.
Vacuum induced lift is a constant force rather than constant displacement technology. This is a very serious problem. When you step off the car, you can expect it to spring upwards. They probably hide this serious problem by making an elevator that can only serve two floors. At the top floor, you drive into a hard stop. At the bottom floor, you do not allow the door to open until the vacuum cylinder is fully vented. On a multifloor design, you could have a mechanical lock that engages before the door opens but then when the lock released there would be a sudden jolt if the passenger was not the same weight as the previous passenger (if any).
The large seals required and the fact that they must operate past doorways (unlike a hydraulic lift) will lead to significant maintenence problems.
This product looks to be pure gimmick. The technology used and other aspects of the design are totally inappropriate to the task.
No problem: telescopic cylinders to the rescue.
hey. :). It calls the operating system to determine what program it should use to open the file. None returns. It b0rks
In the windows version of firefox: firefox displays the file as a text. A windows glitch
How about the low tech solution: get off you fat ass and take the stairs?
This is old news. My checks and deposit slips use this same sort of elevator all the time. Just be sure to ask the homeowner before sending coin.
204kg, that's.... hmmm, about one american isn't it?