Forklift Technical Information
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Carpet boom and push pull attachments
Push Pull Attachments
This attachment helps eliminate the need for pallets. Loads are on cardboard or plastic slip sheets that have a lip on them and the load is pushed off or pulled onto the forks by this attachment. Eliminating pallets helps to reduce cost and to free up space within a facility. These attachments are most popular in food-processing warehouses.
I remember these attachments being first introduced in the 1970's when we had one at Yale Forklifts to try out. The idea is brilliant but it was discovered that you needed a very good forklift operator to use them as the forklift had to approach the slip sheet exactly square on. If not, the sheet could easily rip.
The other problem is that, because no pallet is involved, when the load gets to it's destination, either another slip sheet attachment needs to be in use or the load has to be pushed onto an empty pallet for subsequent handling.
A fairly substantial deration of the truck will occur as the load centre is pushed out to accommodate the attachment mechanism and the attachment itself is not exactly light in weight.
Carpet Boom/Pole
There is only one way to handle carpets and that is by use of a carpet boom attachment. These are usually made of steel bar around 100 mm in diameter and as much as 4 m in length. They require quite a bit of skill on the part of the forklift operator to use and the carpets can be easily damaged by a poor forklift operator.
The biggest problem with these attachments is that they derated the forklift truck by a very substantial amount. A modern day carpet can be up to 5 m long so that the load centre of the truck is about five times greater than it was designed to be!
To get around this problem, designers work "backwards" to usual by looking at the heaviest and longest carpet to be handled and then calculating what capacity truck is needed to handle it. To do this they use this formula. It is not unusual to see a 2000 kg capacity truck being needed to carry a 500 kg carpet!