Material or article handling – Apparatus particularly adapted for charging or discharging a... – With means to transfer – or facilitate transfer of – vehicle...
Reexamination Certificate
2003-03-05
2004-03-09
Ridley, Richard (Department: 3651)
Material or article handling
Apparatus particularly adapted for charging or discharging a...
With means to transfer, or facilitate transfer of, vehicle...
C414S254000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06702541
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates, in general, to a parking system for storing a plurality of vehicles in a limited area, and more particularly, to a palletless rack-type parking for quickly, precisely and safely taking a vehicle into and/or taking it out of the parking space system using a stacker crane operable in more than two axial directions to a rack unit having a plurality of parking spaces without a separate vehicle loading pallet.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In recent years, a rapid increase of vehicles causes the absolute lacking phenomena of parking places, so it becomes serious social problems of raising the difficulty of parking following by the traffic congestion and the environmental pollution. Particularly, the problem of parking places becomes more serious in very busy midtowns due to limited parking places, so it leads to frequent illegal parking, which blocks a traffic flow resulting in the terrible traffic jams.
In an effort to solve such problems of illegal parking and a shortage of parking places in busy cities, there have been attempted a variety of solutions, for example, strengthening of parking regulations and enacting of ordinances which oblige building owners to establish parking places in or around their buildings. However, the expansion of parking places couldn't help having a limitation due to the difficult of securing lands in busy cities.
Therefore, a variety of schemes have been studied in search of a better solution for effectively parking many vehicles on limited areas. As a result of such studies, several parking systems have been proposed and widely used to store vehicles in floors in parking spaces using a mechanical drive unit.
Such conventional parking systems are generally classified into several types such as a circulation-type system, a puzzle-type system, an elevator-type system, etc., in accordance with a drive system. Each of the circulation-type and puzzle-type systems must store a vehicle on its exclusive parking pallet defining a parking space thereon and follow the movement of a plurality of vehicles at the same time of loading or unloading one vehicle into or it out of a parking space, so the demand for such systems falls off nowadays. In place of the circulation-type and puzzle-type systems, elevator-type parking systems have been most widely used, which can simply enter a vehicle into a designated parking space or delivery it therefrom.
An example of a conventional elevator-type parking system is disclosed in Korean Patent No. 0271061 which comprises an elevator for carrying a vehicle loaded pallet to a position of an empty parking space of racks formed in floors and a traction unit for moving the vehicle from the elevator into the empty parking space in a horizontal direction to store it. Of course, the delivery of a vehicle out of the parking space is performed in the reverse order to the entering of the vehicle.
However, the parking system must have a complex configuration because of requiring additional pallets and transact units except the elevator. During the operating of the system, a loading of the system is increased by a weight of the pallets, so it is undesirable in respect that a lot of power and much time are required for the transportation of the vehicle.
In particular, after the loading of the vehicle into a designated parking space of a rack, if some vehicle-free or empty pallets are placed on the parking places, the elevator is moved to the empty parking space to pull out the empty pallet therefrom and then ready for another parking operation at a carrying-in position to be on standby. During being on standby, the elevator carries the empty pallet loaded thereon to be put on another pallet-free parking space according to a delivery control signal and then again moved from the standby position to a target parking space to store another vehicle. As a result, the parking system using such movable pallets undesirably needs a relative longer time for loading vehicles into or unloading them out of the parking spaces of racks.
In order to overcome these and those problems, there has been proposed a palletless rack-type parking system for loading or unloading vehicles into or out of parking spaces of multistory racks without requiring additional pallets. Examples of palletless rack-type parking system are referred to International Laid-open Publication No. WO87/02405 entitled “A Vertical Storage Apparatus and Control Method Thereof” and Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. Heisei 5-52058 entitled “A Stacker Crane-type Parking Garage.
The vertical storage apparatus disclosed in WO 87/02405 comprises a single rack unit including an elevation space and multi-storied storage racks provided on at least one side out of the left side, right side, front side and rear side of the lift space. The rack comprises a plurality of storage forks normally arranged on every story thereof to form two rows spaced apart in a regular interval from each another. The elevation space defined between the storage spaces comprises a pair of elevation forks mounted to be moved up and down therein to carry vehicles in a vertical direction. The storage fork reciprocates between a storage space and the elevation space by a drive unit (not shown) in a manner to be moved toward or away from a position above or under the fork bars of the elevation forks according to the guidance of a horizontal guide beam of the rack. The elevation fork comprises a pair of elevation forks faced to each other, fork bars of which are vertically passed through between fork bars of the storage fork to be placed at a loading/unloading position in the elevation space, without interfering with the fork bars of the storage fork.
In a storage operation, the elevation fork loaded with a vehicle on its fork bars is first moved upward in the elevation space to a desired position higher than that of a target empty storage fork. The target empty storage fork is horizontally moved inward into the elevation space by means of the drive unit to a loading position under the fork bars of the elevation fork. The elevation fork is moved downward to cross the fork bars of the storage fork in order to load the vehicle onto the storage fork. The storage fork is returned by means of the drive unit to its original position, so that vehicle is entered into a storage space of the rack.
However, the vertical storage apparatus free of a pallet has problems in that the drive unit must be provided to operate each storage fork, independently, and the moving distance of the elevation fork is relatively longer, because the elevation fork passes through or cross the storage fork, vertically, during a loading or unloading operation.
Furthermore, the target storage fork must be horizontally moved to a loading or unloading position under or above an elevation fork 2 without causing any interference between the vehicle and any one of the storage and elevation forks. For it, a substantial travel of the elevation fork is a sum of adding an operational allowance to two heights of the storage fork and the elevation fork, which takes a relative longer time for the storage and delivery of the vehicle, so the vertical storage apparatus has a limitation to the reduction of time taken during a loading or unloading operation.
The loading structure for stacker crane-type parking garages described in Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. Heisei. 5-52058 comprises two racks installed on a support surface to be spaced apart at an interval from each other and a stacker crane (not shown) mounted between the racks to enable a lift fork to be moved up and down with being loaded with a vehicle. Multiple cantilever support bars are provided on the right and left shelf members of each rack to form a storage space inside horizontal support beams. The lift fork includes a plurality of arm bars provided on both sides of a body of the stacker crane to cross the support bars without any interference during being lifted or lowered in a protruded state.
In a loading
Ridley Richard
Sheridan Ross PC
LandOfFree
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