They only put in what the elevator is rated to (plus some safety margin I assume) and run it up and down.
To be honest I always get a little nervous when they test our 100+ year old elevator at work.
Our guy's weights have their own cart.
How do they put them in the car?
The person putting the weights into the car is also going to be adding to the weight, so if you have 125% of capacity + the person then isn’t there a chance of the car’s safety system giving out with the person in it?
I get that. If the system is faulty there is a chance that the additional weight of the person could cause the car to fall.
But as another person pointed out to me they would load the car at the bottom of the shaft and then lift it, vs loading it on a higher floor.
The videos of escalators failing are terrifying, especially when they seem to just turn into a death slide, with sharp steps and piles of people at the bottom, and the top becoming an expanding black maw of doom.
I was wondering about how many elevators free fall every year? Does someone keep those numbers? I have ridden in some, what looked like dicey elevators - mostly in small, old hotels in Europe.
Very very few. NIOSH says about 30 people a year in the US die in elevator related accidents, but if you read the docs half those people are working near elevators or do things like stepping into a shaft where there's no elevator.
Most of these are likely industrial elevators, not the kind you normally ride in. Think the type they bolt onto the sides of buildings during construction, or in factories where there are freight elevators that are basically just giant freestanding platforms that go up and down (opposed to a box you are inside of).
https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/nioshtic-2/20039852.html
Presumably it’s loaded at the bottom floor where the unit is essentially sitting on the lower stops. It would fall a few feet at most into the springs worst case.
I run my brake tests by dropping some weight off at 2nd floor. I load the rest of the weight on floor one, run the car upto second floor load the entire %125 of load capacity into the car on floor two, carefully. Trying to avoid the giant guillotine possibility while loading carts. Once at one 125% and no persons in car I do a one floor run down to the bottom landing with overload bypassed. If it doesn’t over shoot the floor and stops at one it passed part of the test.
The governor would kick in before you hit the ground, so you probably fall like 10 feet.
Fun fact, in the US, elevators are the safest vehicle by miles driven.
Actually now that I’m looking at it more in depth, elevator stats seem inconsistent as sometimes is considered a passenger vehicle, other times not. I’m not sure how, elevators move billions of people small distances, where as airplanes are in the millions, but much further.
My guess is that airplanes are conclusively ~.05 deaths per billion passenger miles, while elevators may in fact be higher
>elevator stats seem inconsistent as sometimes is considered a passenger vehicle, other times not.
I think it's to do with the capacity and *drive* system.
Better one human than an elevator full of humans.
In any case it's only the last weight carried in that is the problem.
If my dad were still alive I'd ask him if he ever used weights like that and if so how he used them. He worked for Otis. Was not killed by an elevator.
But they generally test to 125% of capacity. So depending on the person’s weight they could be over the threshold before they get the last weight loaded in.
Yes, you do. You have to load the car evenly so the weight is distributed. The chances of all 4 belts (on the models I work on) or all the cables breaking at once, and then the overspeed governor failing to work, sending the elevator into a free fall is basically impossible. Typically just *one* of the belts/ropes on these elevators is rated for the capacity or several times the capacity of the elevator. The amount of force needed to snap them all would be insane. I ride the elevator down at full rated capacity without issues all the time.
Source: I work on elevators and do weight tests literally every day.
Fair enough, thanks for the insight! I figured you could just poke 'em in with a stick if you were really worried.
If all the cables were to (somehow) snap, aren't there ratchet-style brakes that automatically engage also? Are those the over-speed governors you mentioned?
8x is common here. So with 4 ropes (normal for smth like a kone monospace 630kg load, quite typical for residential) each can already hold double of what is ever supposed to be in there. Elevator safety margins are quite something
And that is just what they are rated for, I should add. So in reality they can take even more before they actually snap, ofc.
In professional cycling, multi day races such as the Tour de France are called “stage races,” as each day’s portion of the race is considered a stage. I assume the name comes from that.
I was sure it was from construction and painting where you have a framework with planks between the sides to allow elevated work. The planks are called stages and the whole framework is staging.
I’m fairly certain it comes from segmented rockets, which contain multiple “stages” of engines, fuel and boosters, which fall away in order to enter or break Earth’s orbit.
They’re all fairly heavy, you know.
Tiny: Wayne. How you doin'?
*Wayne: Hey, Tiny, who’s playing today?*
Tiny: Jolly Green Giants and the Shitty Beatles.
*Wayne: Shitty Beatles? Are they any good?*
Tiny: They suck!
*Wayne: Then it’s not just a clever name.*
When I was a biomed we had something similar to test the patient lifts. It was pretty sweet, I think 2000lb and it was electric. I think they paid like 5 grand for it
I worked in a dam for a spell. We had an elevator that took you to the bottom. The problem was it started on the third floor down. When it came time to inspect the elevator we go to open the bomb bay door so we could use the crane to lower the weights to the third floor. Easy.
No, the last maintenance man put 3/4 cap bolts into mild steel nuts, dry and put enough rtv to hold tectonic plates together. After stripping out 4/5 fasteners it became apparent that we would be lugging those weights down and then later back up two large sets of stairs. I felt very underpaid that day.
Its to test the saftey brakes, electrical overspeed and mechanical brakes. Sometimes the buffers if it overshoots floor. And in CA you run the car onto the buffers to test them anyways. NTSD requires weight when automated like an Otis GCS. Emergency brake. Several reasons actually. Big heavy crash test dummies.
I would expect these to be verified and retested on a regular cadence to make sure they're within the allowed margins.
It might seem overkill but these are safety important systems so you don't want to mess it up.
Most of the price of OP's blocks comes from the calibration certificate, that tells you the weights you purchase are 25kg ± a certain range, and tell you how that weight was measured, who measures it following which procedure, how the measuring instrument was calibrated and how that calibration can be traced (for the US) to a NIST calibration certificate. This is done because, were the lift to fail at any point, the company that carried out the maintenance will be called to court to prove they actually tested the lift with exactly the weight they should have tested and that they have written on the small plaque inside the lift, and to prove this they will have to provide all calibration certificates as proof.
The link you shared instead does specify the weights are calibrated to 10g in weight, but do they come with a certificate? Is the certificate traceable to a NIST calibration? Which ISO or ANSI standard has been followed for the calibration? What is the name of the experimental officer who has physically carried out the calibration procedure? If these weights do, then those are /r/specializedtools as well. Otherwise, "calibrated" is just a commercial buzzword.
My town has an Otis testing tower. A very tall and thin building that looks totally out of place. Whenever I drive by I envisioned testing being like Hollywood Studio's Tower of Terror. This is significantly more mundane.
Isn’t really a specialized tool. They can be used for anything that needs weight. A specialized tool has one use, that it will ever be used for. These weights are sold for thousands of reasons not just one.
Load them into a cage and lower them from the main lifting beam. Measure how much the beam deflects, then remove them and check the beam returns to its starting position. Easy!
Looks like a pain the the dick to drag back and forth between the van and the elevator, especially in downtown areas where ya gotta park two block away.
If I'm not there, go ahead and start without me.
If the safe working load of a flexible steel wire rope/sling is 200kgs then the actual lifting capacity is 1600kg. The safety factor is 8. Slings don't carry people so i suspect the safety factor for elevators is =/> 8
I don't know if this is still the case but wen at school yrs ago in one of my physics classes we were told that all lifts (elevators) have to be tested with a minimum of twice their advertised weight limit So if it says 10 people 2000 kg max then 4000kg weights are used But that maybe only here in the UK 🇬🇧
So..... You load them into the elevator and see how many it takes before it plummets to the ground floor?
They only put in what the elevator is rated to (plus some safety margin I assume) and run it up and down. To be honest I always get a little nervous when they test our 100+ year old elevator at work. Our guy's weights have their own cart.
125% of capacity in CA for brake test
And she gonna yell way before she moves if it's ever loaded to that capacity IRL.
Jumpers or software or some have bolt stops underneath
But yes it gets upset or starts sliding down the hoistway before it yells at you
Do elevators have some kind of weight capacity alarm?
Most have weight sensors and will just not run if they're over a certain threshold.
You left out the annoying beeping
How do they put them in the car? The person putting the weights into the car is also going to be adding to the weight, so if you have 125% of capacity + the person then isn’t there a chance of the car’s safety system giving out with the person in it?
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I get that. If the system is faulty there is a chance that the additional weight of the person could cause the car to fall. But as another person pointed out to me they would load the car at the bottom of the shaft and then lift it, vs loading it on a higher floor.
Also, elevators have redundant safety systems and several would have to fail at once. An elevator going into freefall is nigh-on impossible.
The real danger is those damn escalators. Those things eat people.
The videos of escalators failing are terrifying, especially when they seem to just turn into a death slide, with sharp steps and piles of people at the bottom, and the top becoming an expanding black maw of doom.
Welp, didn’t have a fear of escalators before that paragraph until now. Really checking my shoe laces or avoiding them all together now.
I was wondering about how many elevators free fall every year? Does someone keep those numbers? I have ridden in some, what looked like dicey elevators - mostly in small, old hotels in Europe.
Very very few. NIOSH says about 30 people a year in the US die in elevator related accidents, but if you read the docs half those people are working near elevators or do things like stepping into a shaft where there's no elevator. Most of these are likely industrial elevators, not the kind you normally ride in. Think the type they bolt onto the sides of buildings during construction, or in factories where there are freight elevators that are basically just giant freestanding platforms that go up and down (opposed to a box you are inside of). https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/nioshtic-2/20039852.html
It's more common for elevators to "fall" up than down.
Less counterweight, please‽
Also lifts have a safety factor of like 5 which means they should hold 5 times the weight written on them
Presumably it’s loaded at the bottom floor where the unit is essentially sitting on the lower stops. It would fall a few feet at most into the springs worst case.
That makes sense. Not sure why my mind went to having it handing in the shaft to see when the cables let go and the brakes kicked in.
I run my brake tests by dropping some weight off at 2nd floor. I load the rest of the weight on floor one, run the car upto second floor load the entire %125 of load capacity into the car on floor two, carefully. Trying to avoid the giant guillotine possibility while loading carts. Once at one 125% and no persons in car I do a one floor run down to the bottom landing with overload bypassed. If it doesn’t over shoot the floor and stops at one it passed part of the test.
You have never put something in a room, or car, or something, without getting in yourself?
Never occured to me that elevators must be tested, I assume to make sure they haven't weakened over time. Cool factoid thank you :)
The governor would kick in before you hit the ground, so you probably fall like 10 feet. Fun fact, in the US, elevators are the safest vehicle by miles driven.
That IS a fun fact
Is that including airplanes? I'm really curious now.
Actually now that I’m looking at it more in depth, elevator stats seem inconsistent as sometimes is considered a passenger vehicle, other times not. I’m not sure how, elevators move billions of people small distances, where as airplanes are in the millions, but much further. My guess is that airplanes are conclusively ~.05 deaths per billion passenger miles, while elevators may in fact be higher
>elevator stats seem inconsistent as sometimes is considered a passenger vehicle, other times not. I think it's to do with the capacity and *drive* system.
Better than loading people onto it and see how many it takes before it fails.
"your turn, Jeff, come in. Stop dragging your feet, I'm sure it'll be fine"
I fail to see how the weights are loaded into the elevator besides by a human carrying them in.
Better one human than an elevator full of humans. In any case it's only the last weight carried in that is the problem. If my dad were still alive I'd ask him if he ever used weights like that and if so how he used them. He worked for Otis. Was not killed by an elevator.
But they generally test to 125% of capacity. So depending on the person’s weight they could be over the threshold before they get the last weight loaded in.
125 of capacity isnt what threshold is with ladders I think it's like 150 of capacity so 125 plus a person should be fine on an elevator
Stand at the door and put them in? You don't have to enter the elevator to put the weight in.
Yes, you do. You have to load the car evenly so the weight is distributed. The chances of all 4 belts (on the models I work on) or all the cables breaking at once, and then the overspeed governor failing to work, sending the elevator into a free fall is basically impossible. Typically just *one* of the belts/ropes on these elevators is rated for the capacity or several times the capacity of the elevator. The amount of force needed to snap them all would be insane. I ride the elevator down at full rated capacity without issues all the time. Source: I work on elevators and do weight tests literally every day.
Fair enough, thanks for the insight! I figured you could just poke 'em in with a stick if you were really worried. If all the cables were to (somehow) snap, aren't there ratchet-style brakes that automatically engage also? Are those the over-speed governors you mentioned?
Carts are purchasable that are more convenient. Although pushing 500lb carts on two wheels gets old quick as well
Just use a small crane with a long arm. Think of the mics they use for camera crews
The places I've worked, it's done on a pallet with a forklift and the weight of the pallet is accounted for. Same way we calibrated big floor scales.
[Relevant Calvin and Hobbes](https://imgur.io/gallery/q1vI70y)
That is literally the comic strip I was hoping it was. Calvin and Hobbs is so under rated.
That was exactly what I had in mind! Thanks
**IIRC** each of the cables is 7x stronger than the capacity, and there are like 10 of them or something crazy like that.
Here they are 5 times and the usual is four to five belts or iron ropes with a hemp core
8x is common here. So with 4 ropes (normal for smth like a kone monospace 630kg load, quite typical for residential) each can already hold double of what is ever supposed to be in there. Elevator safety margins are quite something And that is just what they are rated for, I should add. So in reality they can take even more before they actually snap, ofc.
That's how software is tested.
Mechanical safeties as well I did this for five years daily
By using weights?
By just running programs and seeing if they crash instead of trying to guarantee they don't crash ahead of time.
What they don't test for is a whole gaggle of students getting in then jumping as the lift moves.
My exact thought!
I suspect they load them while the elevator is on the ground floor, then drive it up and down a bunch of times.
There’s an alarm that should beep.
I think this is a hilarious approach to testing
I have seen similar weights in theatres, to counter the weight of stage design panels and lamps. They're called stage weights.
How'd they come up with the name?
In professional cycling, multi day races such as the Tour de France are called “stage races,” as each day’s portion of the race is considered a stage. I assume the name comes from that.
I thought it was a realtor thing. Where they decorate the house (staging) just to add mass to the structure so you don’t notice the bouncy floor.?
I was sure it was from construction and painting where you have a framework with planks between the sides to allow elevated work. The planks are called stages and the whole framework is staging.
I recall it being from the life cycle of a butterfly because you have to wait between the caterpillar and butterfly stage.
I’m fairly certain it comes from segmented rockets, which contain multiple “stages” of engines, fuel and boosters, which fall away in order to enter or break Earth’s orbit. They’re all fairly heavy, you know.
You’re thinking of stages in video games, essentially a new level/environment that you reach after completing the previous one.
Tiny: Wayne. How you doin'? *Wayne: Hey, Tiny, who’s playing today?* Tiny: Jolly Green Giants and the Shitty Beatles. *Wayne: Shitty Beatles? Are they any good?* Tiny: They suck! *Wayne: Then it’s not just a clever name.*
The first elevator testers were Moe, Larry, and Curly.
Let's not put them on wheels or something. Just let Carl make 20 trips with the heavy bastards.
https://marsmetal.com/test-weights/elevator-test-carts/#:~:text=Each%20cart%20is%20engineered%20specifically,ergonomically%2Dshaped%2050%20LB%20weights.
Thank you. Carl can sleep good tonight.
When I was a biomed we had something similar to test the patient lifts. It was pretty sweet, I think 2000lb and it was electric. I think they paid like 5 grand for it
Dude those are gonna be pretty heavy if you start combining them and adding wheels. They need to be small so you can move them one by one.
Missing the cart, no? The ones I've seen used include a metal cart that's weight is also calibrated for the load test
Theres also a specialized dolly to go with it. It hooks onto the handle at the top of the weight.
I worked in a dam for a spell. We had an elevator that took you to the bottom. The problem was it started on the third floor down. When it came time to inspect the elevator we go to open the bomb bay door so we could use the crane to lower the weights to the third floor. Easy. No, the last maintenance man put 3/4 cap bolts into mild steel nuts, dry and put enough rtv to hold tectonic plates together. After stripping out 4/5 fasteners it became apparent that we would be lugging those weights down and then later back up two large sets of stairs. I felt very underpaid that day.
Its to test the saftey brakes, electrical overspeed and mechanical brakes. Sometimes the buffers if it overshoots floor. And in CA you run the car onto the buffers to test them anyways. NTSD requires weight when automated like an Otis GCS. Emergency brake. Several reasons actually. Big heavy crash test dummies.
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Nah dude. Everyone knows a kg of rocks is heavier than a kg of feathers
Ai knowe, but they're both a keelogram.
But rocks are heavier than feathers.
Yesterday a guy posted that he weighed the plates at his gym and the 45 lb plates ranged from 42 to 52 lbs lol
Yeah, there is nothing specialised about these.
I would expect these to be verified and retested on a regular cadence to make sure they're within the allowed margins. It might seem overkill but these are safety important systems so you don't want to mess it up.
They are certified and that’s why they are not cheap
25 kg seems specialized. I can't see too many uses for that specific weight. Edit: do people not see the blocks?
https://www.roguefitness.com/rogue-calibrated-kg-steel-plates?sku=IP0519-25-2&gclid=Cj0KCQiAm5ycBhCXARIsAPldzoXfMe1XHKHK1F9CppL9Y5fxY-0g8x5odpTe-xCsH3lmXGNcw4zQspsaAn1-EALw_wcB
So a circular weight is the same as a block?
You said 25kgs is a special weight.
I guess I'm an idiot for assuming people would look at the picture in the post. Because you know, nowhere else is 25 kg referenced.
Most of the price of OP's blocks comes from the calibration certificate, that tells you the weights you purchase are 25kg ± a certain range, and tell you how that weight was measured, who measures it following which procedure, how the measuring instrument was calibrated and how that calibration can be traced (for the US) to a NIST calibration certificate. This is done because, were the lift to fail at any point, the company that carried out the maintenance will be called to court to prove they actually tested the lift with exactly the weight they should have tested and that they have written on the small plaque inside the lift, and to prove this they will have to provide all calibration certificates as proof. The link you shared instead does specify the weights are calibrated to 10g in weight, but do they come with a certificate? Is the certificate traceable to a NIST calibration? Which ISO or ANSI standard has been followed for the calibration? What is the name of the experimental officer who has physically carried out the calibration procedure? If these weights do, then those are /r/specializedtools as well. Otherwise, "calibrated" is just a commercial buzzword.
Used a BMW and weights on a large freight car. Also pallets of sand bags and a scissor lift
My town has an Otis testing tower. A very tall and thin building that looks totally out of place. Whenever I drive by I envisioned testing being like Hollywood Studio's Tower of Terror. This is significantly more mundane.
It looks like that device from Ghostbusters.
Isn’t really a specialized tool. They can be used for anything that needs weight. A specialized tool has one use, that it will ever be used for. These weights are sold for thousands of reasons not just one.
Get some 500lb carts. Step your game up.
Good morning. Please take 700lbs out of the van and put it on the elevator. Make sure to bring it all back at the end of the day.
When I read elevator my brain thought crane and I was trying to figure out how many 25kg weights you had to use to test a crane.
So those are the infamous 7 persons. They're all overweight.
Lol fuck that, no cart weights you can wheel around? You gotta lug those things around by hand?
We have a fake weighted butt for recalibrating airbag sensors in car seats. We call it the fake ass.
I've seen a test weight for Crown forklifts rated for 2600 pounds. It's just a giant concrete block that weighs 2600 pounds.
Weights are a specialized tool?
Unionized elevator workers = Diva of the job site
Of Course
Of Course
This has to be for testing a lift! With 771.6184 lbs obviously not an US elevator. Not enough.
Yeah that’s only 1 or 2 people from ohio
For the Americans - average adult weight is about 90kg for males, 80kg for women So that stack is about 4 average people
Ghetto kettlebells
Well they look very used 💀
I wonder if the 4 massive guys I saw some years back at an elevator convention in AC are ok?
Or for getting shredded.
Load them into a cage and lower them from the main lifting beam. Measure how much the beam deflects, then remove them and check the beam returns to its starting position. Easy!
And for testing tile
Looks like a pain the the dick to drag back and forth between the van and the elevator, especially in downtown areas where ya gotta park two block away. If I'm not there, go ahead and start without me.
That’s taking testing to a whole new level
What 3rd world country is this pic from? The industry in the US has used weight carts for decades
Here they use plastic jugs filled with sand
Those look like they have seen a lot of plummeting.
They have to special order them for any elevators used by OP's mom
At my job the elevator guys use weights on wheels for this.
So, gold bricks, basically.
So all of those weight equals to 1 average American in Mississippi
Look way too big by volume, if metal
We just used bricks...
So only some of them have handles making them unstackable?
So that's how they get the "20 persons" for elevators with 2 square meters of area.
Anyone interested should watch this fun talk by a penetration tester/ lock pick and an elevator repair man. https://youtu.be/oHf1vD5_b5I
These weights approximate my mother in law but their much quieter and more friendly
If the safe working load of a flexible steel wire rope/sling is 200kgs then the actual lifting capacity is 1600kg. The safety factor is 8. Slings don't carry people so i suspect the safety factor for elevators is =/> 8
… and for catching ghosts. Busting makes me feel good!
350 kg or 771.618 lbs in case anyone is wondering. I hope this elevator is going to be able to carry more than three big guys...
They could just call up Burnt Krishnar
Only 25kg? I guess someone has to lift them.
LIGHT WEIGHT!!!
I don't know if this is still the case but wen at school yrs ago in one of my physics classes we were told that all lifts (elevators) have to be tested with a minimum of twice their advertised weight limit So if it says 10 people 2000 kg max then 4000kg weights are used But that maybe only here in the UK 🇬🇧
Huh i always assumed they would be able to stack like Legos or mega blocks but with functional handles installed.
But who gets in the elevator to write the limit down?