On Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:26:15 -0500, Ignoramus3221
wrote:

On 2013-04-10, J.B.Slocomb wrote:
On Tue, 09 Apr 2013 21:58:03 -0500, Ignoramus26995
wrote:

I spent some more time on it today. I consider it to be finished.

1. The pressure gauge is now mounted nicely and firmly in a place that
is unlikely to be affected by load, chains and other forklift use.

2. I figured out how to deal with errors caused by friction. It is
very simple. I just need to take two readings, one after creeping the
load up, and the other after creeping the load down. The average
cancels friction out. Problem solved.

4. I lifted another forklift on the forks of this forklift, took down
pressures, and I now have a nice and easy conversion table, PSI to lbs.

5. I realized that maximum pressure in the system is always well under
2,000 PSI (20,000 PSI would occur only if this 15k forklift tried to
lift a 20k load). So, my oil filled 5,000 PSI gauge would have a great
cushion against pressure spikes.

6. Everything is neat and tidy, the pressure lines do not rub against
anything, the gauge is easily visible, yet protected, etc.

I will probably put similar gauges on all my forklifts.

i

Most of the "Travel Lifts" that lift boats out of the water and move
them around on shore use exactly the same device - a pressure gauge
connected to the lift cylinders and calibrated in pounds or tons of
weight.

Yep. With the averaging of "up" and "down" readings it should be
highly accurate.

i

Have you considered marketing this as a product?

I've worked on a digital unit for a local manufacturer of this kind of
system, but a strictly mechanical product could be good too (but it's
not going to be tying into IT stuff).