PARKING DEVICE FOR MOTOR VEHICLES The invention relates to a parking device for motor vehicles comprising platforms which are arranged one above 5 the other and are adapted to be raised and lowered by a lifting device so as to be selectively connectable to a point of access, said platforms being connected to the lifting device by a bearing means. 10 Parking devices of this type are usually installed in buildings of different dimensions so that the parking devices have to be adapted to the geometry of the space provided therefor in order to make optimal use of this space. Moreover, parking devices of this type are used 15 for motor vehicles of differing sizes so that it makes sense to adapt the location of the platforms in their respective end positions to the size of the motor vehicles in order to make optimal use of the available space. 20 This is usually achieved by employing components of differing sizes for the construction of such a parking device, these components then being joined together on site in order to produce the finished assembly. To this end however, it is necessary to manufacture components of 25 differing sizes and make them available on each occasion since the particular sizes required for the job frequently cannot be accurately determined in advance, for example, due to deviations from the original plans. Moreover, it is not possible to change the dimensions of such a parking 30 device at a later date without having to make very substantial modifications. In accordance with the invention there is provided a parking device for motor vehicles comprising platforms 35 which are arranged one above the other and are adapted to be raised and lowered by a lifting device so as to be selectively connectable to a point of access, said 2393140_1 (GHMatler) - 2 platforms being connected to the lifting device by a respective bearing means, wherein the spacing of at least one of the bearing means from the lifting device is continuously adjustable in the direction of displacement. 5 Preferred embodiments may provide a parking device the size of which can be adapted to desired dimensions in a simple manner. 10 During construction or even subsequently, the ability to make continuous adjustments enables the spacing between the bearing means and the lifting device to be altered so that, whilst always using one and the same lifting device, different positions of the bearing means can be achieved 15 in the course of movement of the lifting device thus making it possible to obtain an optimal match with the dimensions of the building and the sizes of the motor vehicles. 20 It is particularly advantageous, if the adjustable bearing means is connected to the lifting device by at least one threaded spindle and if the spacing thereof from the lifting device is fixed by retaining elements acting on the threaded spindle. By means of a process of rotating 25 the threaded spindle or by rotating retaining elements screwed onto the threaded spindle, different positions of the bearing means relative to the lifting device can thereby be realized, namely, in a continuous manner. Major modifications to the assembly are not necessary, 30 and, in operation, it is always possible to achieve different positionings of the platforms with the same components and in particular, the same lifting devices. It is particularly advantageous, if the adjustable bearing 35 means is connected to the lifting device by two mutually adjacent threaded spindles and if the spacing thereof from the lifting device is fixed by means of retaining elements acting on the threaded spindle. In addition, due to the use of two such 2393140_I (GH*Aattem) threaded spindles, the arrangement is prevented from twisting and, moreover, the loads that have to be borne by the structure are thereby distributed and there is thus an increase in the stability of the entire arrangement. It is expedient thereby, if the threaded spindles are connected together by at least one transverse bar, and in particular, if the threaded spindles can extend through the transverse bar. For the purposes of fixing a transverse bar or a carrier for the bearing means on opposite sides of the transverse bar or carrier, provision is made in one preferred embodiment for retaining elements that are screwed to a threaded spindle extending through the transverse bar or carrier to be tightened against the carrier or transverse bar. The position of the transverse bar or carrier on the threaded spindle is thereby fixed, although this position can still be altered by releasing the screwed-on retaining elements and then tightening them onto the carrier and the transverse bar in the new position. It is particularly advantageous if the lifting device is a piston-cylinder unit and if at least one bearing means is fixed to the cylinder. Due to the displacement of the bearing means on the lifting device, it is always possible to raise the piston-cylinder unit up to its end position without it being necessary to have special limit switches which stop the piston cylinder unit in an intermediate position. Due to the vertical adjustment of the bearing means on the cylinder, the bearing means can be arranged at any arbitrarily desired height even when the piston-cylinder unit has been driven out to its full extent. It is particularly advantageous, if the bearing means that is fixed to the cylinder surrounds the cylinder or the piston and is thereby guided on the cylinder or piston in displaceable manner when the spacing is being adjusted. The stability is substantially increased due to such guidance on the cylinder since the bearing means is held in the axial direction by the threaded spindle, and it is held in the transverse direction by virtue of being guided on the cylinder. In a particularly preferred embodiment, provision is made for a bearing means to be part of a bearing assembly which comprises a transverse bar fixed to the cylinder, at least two threaded spindles that are fixed to said transverse bar and extend in parallel with the cylinder and also a transverse bar that is fixed to the threaded spindles by means of retaining elements and forms the bearing means or carries it. In particular, the transverse bar forming the bearing may comprise a sleeve which surrounds the cylinder or the piston in close-fitting manner and thereby provides guidance and leads to an increase in the stability. The retaining elements may be nuts which are screwed onto the threaded spindles. In another embodiment, provision is made for the retaining elements to be clamping screws which are tightened against the threaded spindles. It is particularly advantageous, if several mutually spaced bearing assemblies are arranged on the cylinder and if each one thereof is associated with a platform. The cylinder is then the carrier for the individual bearing assemblies, whereby the bearing assemblies can always be fixed to the cylinder in the same position, whereas the adjustment of the spacing is effected by the threaded spindles of the bearing assemblies.
In a modified arrangement, provision is made for a lower-lying bearing means to be held in continuously height adjustable manner on a more highly located bearing means. In this case, only the more highly located bearing means is connected to the cylinder, the lower-lying bearing means being carried by the more highly located bearing means or by parts rigidly connected thereto. In one preferred embodiment, provision is made for a lower-lying bearing means to be held on at least one threaded spindle which, for its part, is held by means of a carrier element on at least one threaded spindle that is fixed to the lifting device, and provision is also made for each threaded spindle to carry a respective bearing means that is held on the threaded spindle in height adjustable manner. Thus, each bearing means has a dedicated threaded spindle assigned thereto, whereby the lower threaded spindle is carried by the upper threaded spindle. Provision may also be made for at least two bearing means to be held in height adjustable manner on at least one threaded spindle that is held on the lifting device, whereby there are preferably used two mutually adjacent, continuous threaded spindles which carry at least two bearing means at different heights in height adjustable manner. It is advantageous, if the bearing means are guided in displaceable manner in a fixed vertical guide means, so that the guiding process does not have to be undertaken by the lifting device alone, but substantially by the vertical guide means. In particular, provision may be made for the bearing means as a whole to form a reciprocating carriage which is guided in the vertical guide means in displaceable manner.
The following description of preferred embodiments of the invention taken in conjunction with the drawing serves to provide a more detailed explanation. In the drawing: Figure 1: shows a perspective view of a parking device having two platforms which are arranged one above the other when in the lowered position; Figure 2: a view similar to Figure 1 wherein the platforms are in the raised position; Figure 3: an enlarged perspective view of a piston-cylinder unit having two bearing assemblies fixed thereto; Figure 4: a bearing assembly in accordance with the exemplary embodiment of Figure 3 utilising short threaded spindles; Figure 5: a bearing assembly similar to Figure 4 utilising long threaded spindles and Figure 6: a modified exemplary embodiment of a lifting device comprising two height adjustable bearing assemblies. The parking device 1 illustrated in the drawing is erected on a flat floor area 2 of a building. This floor is located at a lower level with respect to a point of access 3, the floor area 2 being bounded by a vertical side wall 4 extending up to the point of access 3. The floor area 2 can, for example, be part of a pit which is provided in a building, whereby the point of access 3 is at the level of the surroundings. A respective framework 5 is set up on each of the long sides of the floor area 2. Each of the mutually similar, mirror-image frameworks 5 comprises a front vertical support 6, a rear vertical support 7 and also a web 8 interconnecting these two supports at the top thereof. Two platforms 9, 10 are mounted one above the other in height adjustable manner between the two frameworks so that the two platforms 9, 10 can be selectively coupled to the point of access 3 whereby motor vehicles can drive onto the platforms 9, 10 from the point of access 3 and then drive down from them again. Both platforms comprise a flat parking surface 11 and have side cheeks 12, 13 which bound the sides of said surface. Rather than using a framework 5 comprising vertical supports 6, vertical supports 7 and a web 8 interconnecting these two at the top, a modified way of mounting the two platforms 9, 10 could also be adopted although this is not illustrated in the drawing. In this modified form of mounting, the vertical support 6 is fixed firmly to the ground, whereas the rear support 7 is mounted on the ground in pivotal manner and is kept approximately perpendicular by a guide means on the upper platform 9. The platforms are thus guided on the vertical front supports 6 whereas the guidance of the rear supports 7 is accomplished by the upper platform 9. In both cases, the front support 6 is in the form of a vertical guide means for a reciprocating carriage 14, whereby these front supports are, for example, rugged C-section rails the open sides of which face one another. A reciprocating carriage 14 is mounted within these profiled rails in vertically displaceable manner, the vertical displacement thereof being effected by a piston-cylinder unit 15 the piston rod 16 of which is supported on the floor area 2, its cylinder 17 being raised by the piston rod 16 when the latter is driven out of the cylinder 17. This cylinder 17 is connected to the reciprocating carriage 14 and carries it along therewith during the lifting movement.
Two bearing means 18, 19 are arranged one above the other on the reciprocating carriage 14, the upper platform 9 being mounted on the upper bearing means 18 such as to be pivotal about a horizontal axis of rotation which runs transversely relative to the longitudinal direction of the platform 9, whilst the lower platform 10 is mounted on the lower bearing means 19 in a corresponding manner. When the platforms are in the lower position, the lower platform 10 rests on the floor area 2 or on stops on the rear support 7 of the framework 5 which are not illustrated in the drawing. The upper platform 9 rests on stops 20 on the rear support 7 of the framework 5 (Figure 1). When the reciprocating carriage 14 is being raised, both platforms 9, 10 are pivoted, the lower platform 10 pivoting about the rear edge thereof or about an axis of rotation which is formed by stops on the rear support 7, the upper platform 9 pivoting about an axis of rotation which is formed by the stops 20. By virtue of such a pivotal movement alone, it is in principle possible to move the platforms from a lower position wherein the upper platform 9 is linked to the point of access 3 into an upper position wherein the lower platform 10 is linked to the point of access 3. Hereby however, relatively steep inclinations of the platforms 9, 10 are necessary. In the exemplary embodiment illustrated in Figures 1 and 2, care is therefore taken to ensure that the platforms are also raised or lowered in addition to the pivotal movement thereof. For this purpose, the ends of the two platforms remote from the point of access 3 are connected together in articulated manner by substantially vertically extending guide bars 21, and in addition, the lower platform 10 has two guide rollers 22, 23 disposed on the outer surfaces of its side cheeks 12, 13, namely, a front guide roller 22 directly adjacent the front support 6 and a rear guide roller 23 directly adjacent the rear support 7. A cable 24 or a chain is wrapped around these guide rollers 22 and 23, one of the ends thereof being fixed to the floor area 2 below the guide roller 22, while the opposite end thereof is fixed to the upper end of the framework 5 above the rear guide roller 23. The cable 24 thus extends upwardly from the rear guide roller 23 approximately parallel to the rear support 7. When the cable 24 is tensioned, raising of the lower platform 10 leads directly to the rear guide roller 23 also being raised, there is thus a parallel raising of the lower platform 10 which is also conveyed to the upper platform 9 by the reciprocating carriage 14 and the guide bar 21. If the length of the cable 24 is selected to be such that it is not under tension when the platforms are in the lowered position, but instead, hangs loosely as is illustrated in Figure 1, then lifting in the vicinity of the rear guide roller 23 does not occur when the lower platform 10 is raised by the reciprocating carriage 14, but rather, the two platforms firstly perform a pivotal movement in the manner described, whereby however the cable 24 becomes increasingly taut until it is finally fully tensioned whereupon, in the course of further raising of the platform 10, the platforms no longer pivot in the manner described, but are raised. In Figure 2, the platforms are illustrated in the raised position. In order to construct the reciprocating carriage 14 in the case of the exemplary embodiments illustrated in Figures 3 to 5, two mutually spaced bearing assemblies 25, 26 are fixed to the cylinder 17 and since these assemblies are of identical construction in the illustrated exemplary embodiment only one of the two bearing assemblies will be described in detail hereinafter. Each bearing assembly comprises an upper transverse bar 27 including a sleeve 28 through which the cylinder 17 is pushed. In the region comprised by the sleeve 28, it surrounds the cylinder very closely, the transverse bar 27 being fixed to the cylinder 17 at this point by a clamping or welding process for example. The transverse bar 27 comprises two continuous borings at the two opposite sides thereof, and through these borings, there is inserted a respective threaded spindle 29, 30. The two mutually parallel threaded spindles 29, 30 projecting downwardly from the transverse bar 27 carry a respective nut 31 and 32 above and below the transverse bar 27, and these nuts 31 and 32 are tightened against the transverse bar 27 so that the threaded spindles 29, 30 are fixed thereby in the transverse bar 27. A similarly constructed transverse bar 33 is pushed onto the lower end of the threaded spindles 29 and 30, this transverse bar likewise comprising a sleeve 34 which tightly surrounds the cylinder 17, although, in contrast to the transverse bar 27, it is not fixed to the cylinder 17 in the longitudinal direction but is freely displaceable with respect thereto. In this region of the transverse bar 33, the threaded spindles 29, 30 also carry nuts 35, 36 on opposite sides of the transverse bar 33, the transverse bar 33 being fixed to the threaded spindles 29, 30 by said nuts. By loosening the nuts 35, 36 and rotating them along the threaded spindle 29, 30, the position of the transverse bar 33 i.e. the spacing of the transverse bar 33 from the transverse bar 27, can be altered in a continuous manner.
The transverse bar 33 forms the respective bearing means 18 and 19 on which one of the two platforms 9, 10 is mounted. This is symbolized in Figure 3 by a mounting opening 37. The upper bearing assembly 25 is fixed to the upper end of the cylinder 17, the bearing assembly 26 to the lower end of the cylinder 17, and the spacing of the transverse bars 33 taken with respect to their points of attachment to the cylinder 17 can be adjusted continuously by the threaded spindles 29, 30 and the facility for displacement thereof. It is possible hereby, for threaded spindles 29, 30 of different lengths to be used as will become clear with the aid of Figures 4 and 5, so that adjustment paths of differing length are available if necessary. When assembling the parking device 1, it is therefore possible to move the bearing means 18, 19 until they are at the desired height relative to the cylinder without the need for large structural changes. At the same time, the transverse bars 27 and 33 also form parts of the reciprocating carriage 14 which is guided in the front support 6 in the vertical direction. In this respect, the ends of the transverse bars 33 and/or the transverse bars 27 may be provided with guide elements 38, for example with caps made from a material having a low coefficient of friction or with rollers not illustrated in the drawing which rest against the lateral arms of the front support 6 having a C-shaped cross section and thus provide lateral guidance. The reciprocating carriage is then formed by the cylinder 17 and the two bearing assemblies 25 and 26 arranged thereon. This reciprocating carriage is displaceable directly on the piston rod 16 and with respect to the front support 6.
In the case of the exemplary embodiment of Figures 3 to 5, two identically constructed bearing assemblies 25 and 26 are fixed to the cylinder 17 at different points thereof. In contrast thereto, the cylinder 17 in the arrangement depicted in Figure 6, which is of similar construction and bears the same reference symbols for mutually corresponding parts, only carries a transverse bar 27 at its upper end. In this exemplary embodiment moreover, the piston-cylinder unit is not arranged in the interior of the front support 6, but is located adjacent thereto, and accordingly the central sleeve 28, which surrounds the cylinder 17 in the exemplary embodiment of Figures 3 to 5, is also missing from the transverse bar 27. In the exemplary embodiment of Figure 6, the transverse bar 27 fixed to the upper end of the cylinder 17 projects laterally into the interior of the support 6 and there, in similar manner to the transverse bar 27 in the exemplary embodiment of Figures 3 to 5, it carries two mutually parallel threaded spindles 29, 30 upon which a transverse bar 33 comprising a mounting opening 37 is held in height adjustable manner. Additionally in this exemplary embodiment, a bar-like carrier 39 is fixed to the lower end of the two threaded spindles 29, 30, in the exemplary embodiment illustrated here, this carrier 39 is held on the threaded spindles 29 and 30 by nuts 40, 41 which are tightened onto it at both sides. Two mutually parallel, downwardly extending further threaded spindles 42, 43 are fixed to this carrier 39, namely, by means of nuts 44 and 45, and these carry a bearing plate 46 incorporating a mounting opening 47 which is vertically adjustable in a similar manner to the likewise plate-like transverse bar 33. The bearing plate 46 is fixed to the threaded spindles 42, 43 by means of two nuts 48, 49 in a similar manner to the transverse bar 33.
- 13 Thus, in this exemplary embodiment, the lower bearing assembly, which is formed by the bearing plate 46 and the threaded spindles 42 and 43, is not directly fixed to the 5 cylinder of the lifting device, but rather, via the carrier 39 to the threaded spindles 29 and 30 and thus to the upper transverse bar 33, and so the entire arrangement forming the reciprocating carriage is connected to the cylinder 17 by the transverse bar 27 alone. 10 In this case too, both bearing assemblies, namely, the transverse bar 33 on the one hand and the bearing plate 46 on the other, are continuously adjustable in height in mutually independent manner and are fixed in appropriate is positions so that adaptation to the dimensions of a given building and to the sizes of the motor vehicles can be effected at any time both in the case of a new building and at a later time point. 20 In the claims which follow and in the preceding description of the invention, except where the context requires otherwise due to express language or necessary implication, the word "comprise" or variations such as "comprises" or "comprising" is used in an inclusive sense, 25 i.e. to specify the presence of the stated features but not to preclude the presence or addition of further features in various embodiments of the invention. It is to be understood that, if any prior art publication 30 is referred to herein, such reference does not constitute an admission that the publication forms a part of the common general knowledge in the art, in Australia or any other country. 35 23931401 (GHMatters) 31/08/10