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TA DA!

Here it is. The first unload conveyor in North America at Okemo made by Emmegi, installed by us.
I have a 10 second video of it, but its too big for the space allowed here (4MB).

Works like a charm so far. Freaky sensation when you ride it.
If you stand next to it long enough, the whole world moves and the conveyor stands still.
The lifties get virtigo from time to time.

 100_0082_IMG.JPG (446.91K)
Number of downloads: 237

okemopoma, on Dec 22 2008, 12:08 PM, said:

I have ridden it a few times and everytime it still seems like a carnival ride. I like it but it is about 50/50 those who like it and those who don't.

as a benefit it seems that it would be easier to maintain than a ramp made of snow

I'm just a guy who rides lifts, not an industry insider, so appoligies in advance if this is a dumb question:

Is the point of the conveyor belt to enable a higher rope speed, or is it to make loading & unloading easier so that the chair stops less often? Or is it a combination of the two?

I've ridden chairs with loading conveyor belts and my recollection is that the rope speed is higher than a normal fixed grip, but I didn't measure it with any degree of accuracy. Boyne Mt just installed one this season, and their marketing blurbs tout that the new lift the second fastest way up the hill (after the HS6pack). So my impression is that the selling point of a conveyor-loading lift is that it allows for a faster lift speed without the expense of a detachable. Is this correct?

Walt Askier, on Jan 7 2009, 09:10 AM, said:

No.
There are specified maximum speeds for all lifts - including fixed grip types.
Fixed-grip single chair: 600 ft/min
fixed-grip double chair: 550 ft/min
fixed-grip triple chair: 500 ft/min
fixed-grip quad chair: 450 ft/min

While it is true that a well-functioning unloading carpet might allow a faster rope speed, the authorities having jurisdiction do not.
This post has been edited by Emax: 07 January 2009 - 09:38 AM

Emax, on Jan 7 2009, 12:37 PM, said:

Are those numbers industry wide, or just for Utah?

Boyne Mt claims that their new conveyor loading chair runs faster than their other chairs.
This post has been edited by Walt Askier: 07 January 2009 - 01:48 PM

I believe that e-max's numbers come from the ansi standard .

For one, those numbers are quite genorous.
Would you like to load a fixed grip triple a 500fpm? without a conveyor assist.

All though you are allowed to run double fixed grip chairs at 550 fpm most are designed to run at 500 fpm and I personally run them at around 460 - 400 fpm depending on the crowd and the experience level of the ridership. A faster lift does not necesarially(sp) mean a faster trip up the hill if you are constantly stopping ,slowing and re-starting the lift for misloads and slow requests.
This post has been edited by aug: 07 January 2009 - 02:00 PM

Quote

I guess I'm a bit confused here. Emax says that there are speed limits for rope speed. aug says that those speeds are faster than lifts are usually run in practice, and seems to imply that with conveyor assisted loading it might be possible to run the lift faster .

So, does the conveyor assisted loading allow the lifts run at a faster rope speed in practice? Is this the selling point, or is it that conveyor-assisted lifts have fewer stops due to mis-loads?

I would say that it's more of a time thing. Few mis-loads result in a "faster" (actually shorter) ride up. I think they mean faster as in less time, because of fewer stops and slows.

Walt Askier, on Jan 7 2009, 03:23 PM, said:

Yes.
The speeds I mentioned are the legal limits - but as Aug points out, most of us run these lifts at lower speeds both to ease loading and to limit crashes at the unloading station.

The benefit of an UNLOADING carpet is presumably fewer falls at the the unload station. A LOADING carpet could allow for faster operation, but only if the chair spacing were to be increased. Chairs arriving at a greater rate than one every six seconds make loading a lift nearly impossible.
This post has been edited by Emax: 07 January 2009 - 04:09 PM

It seems Okemo does not run the lift any faster and there still is quite a few slows and stops!

this is what happens when marketing people get involved

For a couple years I lived in a condo in Whistler which had long shag carpet throughout... same colour exactly. Hurt the eyes.

"...and their marketing blurbs tout that the new lift the second fastest way up the hill (after the HS6pack)".

Let me try this, Walt. I don't see in your quote where the marketing dept said that the load conveyor allowed faster rope speeds, only that the new quad is the second fastest way up the hill.
With the HSS running at 1000 fpm and the new quad running at the maximum allowable 450 fpm, it just means that the rest of their lifts run at less than (or maybe equal to= marketing-marketing-marketing) 450 fpm.
The loading / unloading carpets are a tool to try and improve efficiency which in turn improves uphill capacity and decreased ride time (which could be related to "faster").
Clear as mud?

Dino
This post has been edited by Lift Dinosaur: 17 January 2009 - 12:57 PM

The South Ridge B Quad page has been updated with new pictures of the loading and unloading carpets. As an aside I have also used Skier's pictures of Sunday River's Chondola and posted that page as well.

http://www.skilifts.org/vt-okemo.html
http://www.skilifts.org/me-sr.html

the speeds mr max points out are from B77 table 4.1, and the table is titled "maximum relative speeds". relative to what? doesn't say, but i would opine that the speeds listed are relative to the passenger's butt.

in other words, if you're standing at a load line on a fixed grip quad, the chair can't hit your butt faster than 450fpm.

the usual intention for installing a load carpet is to reduce the carrier relative speed (impact on the passengers arse) thereby reducing slows/stops.

i was at a recent B77 meeting where a load carpet manufacturer suggested running fixed grip lifts faster by using a load conveyor. he posed a theoretical question: could a fixed grip quad be run at 600fpm using a load conveyor running at 200fpm? the relative speed would be 400fpm, still less than B77 requires.

the entire lift would need to be qualified at his higher speed (motor, drive, line sheaves, brakes, etc) -but maybe? interesting question? less expensive than a new detach?

ps: no faster than 600fpm, unless you want to add a cps system too!

Walt Askier: "I'm just a guy who rides lifts, not an industry insider, so appoligies in advance if this is a dumb question:

Is the point of the conveyor belt to enable a higher rope speed, or is it to make loading & unloading easier so that the chair stops less often? Or is it a combination of the two?

I've ridden chairs with loading conveyor belts and my recollection is that the rope speed is higher than a normal fixed grip, but I didn't measure it with any degree of accuracy. Boyne Mt just installed one this season, and their marketing blurbs tout that the new lift the second fastest way up the hill (after the HS6pack). So my impression is that the selling point of a conveyor-loading lift is that it allows for a faster lift speed without the expense of a detachable. Is this correct?"

Walt - in light of shoemann's pointing out the qualification "relative speed" in the ANSI standard, I must retract at least some of my comments. If the authorities having jurisdiction would agree that this indeed does mean "carrier speed relative to the customer", then I am completely in favor of applying both loading and unloading carpets to fixed grip lifts, removing some percentage of carriers and running them faster. To modify an existing lift in such a way, however, would involve many considerations - as shoemann points out - but nothing that couldn't be dealt with.

The resulting machine would probably have about the same uphill capacity as the "original", but the trip would be much shorter. Better yet, this scheme is infinitely simpler than that of a detachable chair system. There is little doubt that it would cost a lot less as well.

I doubt that the two remaining manufacturers would have much interest in this idea, but there are a lot of qualified engineers out there who might take a whack at it with a "transplant lift".
This post has been edited by Emax: 30 January 2009 - 01:21 PM

shoemaniii, on Jan 28 2009, 04:32 PM, said:

Thanks. I was under the impression that loading carpets were already marketed and installed this way (i.e. to allow increased rope speeds). I guess it's still in the "interesting theory" phase.

I haven't had a chance to check out Boyne's new lift yet, but the simplest explanation of the "fastest trip to the top" would be a shorter rope - and IIRC the Meadows chair had less span than the other chairs. Maybe this is it?

BTW, I did get a chance to ride a loading carpet at Mt Snow the other day - of course, it stops short of the loading area so it couldn't be used to increase rope speed.
This post has been edited by Walt Askier: 02 February 2009 - 09:00 AM

Resurecting this discussion....

I ran across this article today:
http://www.mlive.com...lift_a_mov.html

"Boyne Mountain ski resort has a new, $1.8-million high-speed lift that is a combination of a "magic carpet" type conveyor belt loader and a quad chairlift....

The new chairlift runs at 490 feet per minute, compared with the standard 350-feet-per-minute chairlift. "

So it appears that they're running this quad faster than the industry standard max for a FGQ (450), but not by all that much. Meanwhile, they run their standard quads 100 fpm slower than the max.

So, I suppose the carpet does allow for faster rope speeds. One caveat is that the article was written before the lift went into operation so the stats represent a plan not actual practical results. I'm curious whether they achieved that rate in practice.