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New Maglev Elevator Can Travel Horizontally, Vertically, and Diagonally (wired.co.uk)
An elevator that can move in any direction has been successfully tested by a German company named ThyssenKrupp. An anonymous reader quotes Wired UK:
The Multi is the first ropeless lift, built using the same magnetic levitation technology used in Japan's bullet train and proposed for the Hyperloop. In the same way the train slides along a track horizontally, the lift travels both vertically, horizontally and diagonally around a building riding an electromagnetic field, a system known as a linear drive. "If you can run a 500-tonne train on magnets at 500km/h you should be able to elevate a cabin of 500 kilograms or 1,000 kilograms at a speed of five metres per second," [ThyssenKrupp CEO Andreas] Schierenbeck said.
The elevator can cost 3 to 5 times more than a regular elevator -- but can handle higher buildings than a conventional elevator.
The elevator can cost 3 to 5 times more than a regular elevator -- but can handle higher buildings than a conventional elevator.
One way to think about elevators and high-rises is to start from the top. The uppermost part is a little building that only needs one elevator. As you add floors on the bottom they need more shafts so that you can fill and empty the building in a reasonable time. With conventional elevators, there is only one per shaft. (Although it can be more than one floor high.) At some point the next bottom floor you add will be all elevator shafts and unless you think you can make money from a more scenic view from the top, you stop. With this tech the elevators become cars on a vertical railway and can take on passengers without blocking shafts. Big gain.
On a 50 floor building an elevator 4'x6' will have a shaft a little larger plus a 10' waiting area in front of it, so say 15x8 or 120 feet square x 50 floors gives 6000 square feet. Times $1000 per square foot for grade A office space and your elevator is now taking up $6 million dollars worth of floor space.
Not really. Look at the Vancouver Skytrain or any other linear motor system in use. When the train stops, it puts wheels down and brakes.
The thing I'd be worried about here is the brakes failing due to weight restrictions being ignored, and that would be easily solved by having the elevator detect brake stress and automatically go out of service.
Rocket-powered, parachute-equipped escape pods.
Never pass up a chance to rocket-power something.
Was not even mentioned in the summary. You can run multiple cabins in the same shaft, saving precious floor space (and move the cabins horizontally if they need to pass each other, or you can just assign up and down shafts). Thus, for larger buildings this type of elevator can actually be a major cost saver.
With a conventional elevator, you're correct about the "it reserves an entire shaft" concept. That's inherent with presence of either the cable, or hydraulic cylinder. Why would that limitation exist with a maglev elevator? There's no need for one elevator car per shaft. I think 4 shafts would work nicely: Up, Down, Ready, Waiting. And only the Ready shaft has a door accessible to the public. You press the call button and the usual case is the door will open immediately since there's already a car waiting there. After you select your floor, that car moves a short distance towards either the Up or Down shaft and proceeds on your journey. Meanwhile, a nearby car in the Waiting shaft starts its own journey to replace the car you just took. As your car approaches your destination, the car already there starts its own journey to a Waiting Shaft slot to make room for your car.
Yup. Also Hyperloop advocates get very heated if anyone suggests there's any kind of maglev technology involved (I suspect the submitter is confusing maglev with linear induction motors? That still doesn't explain the Bullet Train comment though...)
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Because of the shoddy writing in the article and the summary, I can understand why you would think it's contactless. But it isn't. The similarity with maglev trains and the hyperloop is the fact that it uses a linear motor to move along the track. The elevator car is still affixed to a track/rail and does not levitate. When it needs to go sideways, it does so at specially located switchpoints where it traverses a horizontal track. This would be obvious from reading the articles or, for the short-attention-spanned, watching the embedded videos.