Ergonomic Lift Assists & Lifting Devices
Custom Designed and Engineered Tools

Ergonomic Partners works with manufacturers in almost every industry to provide ergonomic handling solutions utilizing our large variety of standard and custom designed lift assist devices.

Highly repetitive manual lifting of heavy awkward loads can contribute to back, neck, shoulder, and wrist strain. By eliminating these unnatural motions, the risk of a repetitive stress injury can be greatly reduced.

Ergonomic Partners specializes in custom lifting devices that include: electromagnets, permanent magnets, mechanical tools, compressed air, vacuum lift assist, and battery powered lifters that can simulate the human arm, hand, or wrist.

See a short video of a Creel Room Wire Spool Lift Tool in action here.  Special lifting devices can be more productive than manual handling, especially when long work hours and fatigue are considered as contributors to costly repetitive motion musculoskeletal and back injuries.

Lifting devices can include anything from standard hooks, electromagnets and core grips, as well as pneumatic clamps or vacuum. All attachments can be equipped with up-end, down-end, rotate, and tilt functions.

In most cases, custom lifting tools are not built until the engineer, line worker, and your Ergonomic Partners representative have all had input into the tooling design and use.  Ergonomic Partners offer and recommend pre-installation run-offs at our tooling facility to get a more hands feel for the tooling before installing in your facility.

Some examples of our standard lifting tools and custom ergonomic lifts are shown below:
 

Lifting tool for loading loose stacks of beverage
cartons into a packaging line magazine.

Special lifting device for moving built-in ovens
from the assembly line to the base tray for packaging.

Special lifting applications come in all shapes and sizes.  This special stacker crane was designed to run on dual monorails to load rolls of non-woven material on to unwind spindles at various elevations on a converting process production line in very close quarters.

The core gripper is built with a positive interlock to the end of the unwind spindle and the loading of the roll to the spindle is done with the push of a button on the stacker control handle.

This ergonomic improvement minimizes awkward working postures, heavy lifting, forceful exertions and manual carrying of rolls.

Automotive windshield handling tool

Cast aluminum wheel lifting device.

Simple lifting tong with zero gravity G-Force balancer
for handling pipe and tube.

Powered opening and closing lifting tong for
palletizing concrete blocks.

Custom vacuum lift assist integrated with an air balancer for windshield handling in Automotive assembly. The lifting device is powered by venturi vacuum using plant compressed air.  See the case study.

Custom vacuum lifting device integrated with Gorbel G-Force and remote mount handle. The lift assist allowed for one operator to handle the 150 pound boxes while the second operator was able to tape the boxes. Ergonomic Partners  custom solution allow for increased production and reduced strain on the operator.  See the case study.

Mechanical ergonomic lift assist to lift customers damper/driveshaft assembly for the automotive
industry. The simplistic mechanical tool integrated with an air balancer was a perfect fit for this high cycle application. See the case study.

Custom pneumatic grip tool to lift up automotive radiators with high speed Gorbel G-Force PLC controlled hoist. The lifting device is powered by pneumatic cylinders with dual interlocking release to prevent inadvertent part release. See the case study.

Custom ergonomic lift assist integrated with Gorbel G-Force for lifting silicon ingots
The lifting device is powered by venturi vacuum run from the customers compressed air
supply.  See the case study.

This was a particularly challenging application.

The ingots were close in proximity to each other. This prevented us from picking up the  parts with a power gripper.

The parts were expensive, so we could not use an air balancer or vacuum lifter because of the precise placement.

We needed to handle the parts safely and eliminate the heavy manual lifting despite these constraints.

This heat exchanger lift assist  was integrated with a Gorbel G-Force for high speed precise placement.  See the case study.

Custom Positech pneumatic manipulator with pneumatically actuated grip to pick up HVAC coils weighing up to 90 pounds. The lifting device has two sets of controls to
consistently maintain good ergonomic posture.  See the case study.

Custom lifting device for handling truck
transmission shifter assembly.

Lift assist for returnable dunnage tray handling.

See a short video of a Creel Room Wire Spool Lift Tool in action here.  Special lifting devices can be more productive than manual handling, especially when long work hours and fatigue are considered as contributors to costly repetitive motion musculoskeletal and back injuries.

For more information and assistance with your special lifting jobs, please contact Ergonomic Partners.