How to Choose the Perfect Scissor Lift Match for Your Needs

Scissor lifts are among the most essential and often-used types of material handling equipment in the industrialized world. There are hundreds of different types of these lifting tables and innumerable different jobs for which they’re well suited. Some are built into small carts and designed to lift no more than a couple hundred pounds of material; others are built to raise loads of more than 20 tons. Some are designed to operate as excellent portable aerial work platforms. Hydraulic scissor lifts are primarily designed to lift materials. How do you determine which model or models best match your business’ requirements? Please read the following concise article.

The scissor lifts are one of the great industrial use inventions in history. Its basic design, that of using interlocked legs to raise an attached platform on which loads are placed, has revolutionized the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of countless types of businesses that have tasks involving a good deal of heavy lifting. These table lifts, powered via DC batteries, AC current, air bags, or foot pumps for indoor use or outdoor use, allow the easy, quick lifting of enormously heavy loads, often loads that would be very difficult to raise via any other manner.

In addition to their capability of raising extremely heavy materials, scissor lifts also are a vitally important component of providing optimum worker safety at many businesses. Although there are many industrial lifting jobs that than humans are capable of doing manually, a vast number of these tasks are unadvisable from a healthcare standpoint. It is the customer’s responsibility to verify correctness of fit for applications.

Many manual-lifting tasks can result in immediate injury, while a vast number of others can cause injuries and conditions that occur over a period of time such as repetitive stress injuries, often also termed cumulative trauma disorders. Either type of injury can easily result in considerable absenteeism and a significant rise in medical and workers’ compensation costs. In addition, if these types of injuries occur with any amount of frequency, they often can lower employee morale, which can further reduce a business’ productivity.

Scissor lifts, in addition to their important lifting capabilities, also are among the top types of injury-prevention devices commonly used in industrial settings today. Instead of workers constantly placing undue strain on their backs, necks, arms, and legs, all they need to do when operating a scissor lift is push a button, operate a simple lever, or press a foot pump. The well-crafted machinery of these lift tables then easily takes care of the lifting involved with the task. Simply put, a key function of material lifts is to bring the work to the worker so that he does not have to place needless, often excessive, strain on his body to bring the work to himself.

Your first task in choosing the scissor lifts that are the optimum match for your business’ needs is to determine exactly what you want the scissor lift to accomplish. What will it be lifting and for what kinds of tasks? Do you own a machine shop and need a scissor lift strictly to lift parts and components? Are you in the lumber business and will it be lifting only wooden planks? Or do you operate a factory that will need a scissor lift to raise considerably heavier materials such as steel or iron? Determine precisely what you’ll need the elevating table to do and you’ll reduce the model types you’ll consider for purchase by more than 90 percent.

The next aspects to determine are your lifting capacity needs, scissor lift platform size requirements, and lifting height requirements. Generally, the greater a scissor lift’s capacity, the higher its cost. As with any product you buy for your business, you want top quality, but you also don’t want to pay more than you need to. Consequently, if you know that the absolute maximum load you’ll ever need your scissor lift to raise is 4,000 pounds, you don’t need or wish to pay extra for one designed to lift three tons of materials.

Platform size is equally important. What are the absolute maximum dimensions of loads you will ever need your elevating table to raise? Take some time to determine that and then, needless to say, banish from consideration any lift table model that does not have a platform size large enough to accommodate those dimensions.

Very importantly, height considerations for elevating tables should not stop at your maximum height requirements. It frequently also is vital for business people who oversee factory, distribution center, or warehouse operations to also take into account lowered height requirements when choosing a lifting table. What is the lowest height you can foresee that your scissor lift would be required to descend to in order to perform a task? Will you ever have a job that will require it to get down to one-half inch from ground level so that items can be rolled onto its platform? If so, then you can eliminate the majority of available models from consideration. Most scissor lifts are not designed to descend that low. However, there are top-quality scissor tables designed to do just that, and at least several will be excellent choices to match your requirements.

So take the time to consider exactly what your lifting requirements are before actively looking into the best material lift models to suit those requirements. After you then take additional consideration time to choose the exact model that’s the perfect match for your needs, you will have many years during which your lifting requirements will be completely taken care of, and, as a consequence, your business will operate more effectively and profitably.

Beacon Technology is a world-class provider of Material Handling Equipment. Since 1949, the Beacon Brand has been serving dealers, architects, specifiers, designers, builders and buyers for commercial, industrial and government material handling equipment projects. Beacon’s Scissor Lifts come in a wide array of configurations, and are perfect for any application.