hand-powered hydraulic windlass ?

sarabande

sarabande

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On another thread, there's a discussion about hand vs electric windlasses. with a view emerging that there are

1 limitations to human power for manual winching, especially for iterative recovery;

2 reliability and power source problems with electric winches.


On the farm we have a couple of small hydraulic systems powered by semi-rotary (manual) handles. It seems to me that a handpowered hydraulic motor (in a configuration similar to a sheet winch, so either vertical or horizontal) could be set up to power the anchor winch, and thus provide a solution to the two points above.

What sort of losses are involved in hydraulic power ?

Any engineers with views, or who would like to develop a test rig with me ?
 
Losses are limited when they are hand powered because the hydraulic system is multiplying the foce you provide to pump it.
So there is very little loss apart from the operater running out of energy to pump. But most hydraulic pumps and motors are only ever around 90% efficent because of the loss in flow through seals and pump type , depending on the pump operation piston, gear or vane the efficiecy is still only around 90% same applies to motors because of leakage past the vanes, gears, or pistons as none are a positive seal.

But because of the force a hydraulic system can provide multiplying input energy thats where the benifit lies.
 
What about these rechargeable drill winch adaptors? The thought ocurred to me when had the possibility of obtaining a vertical manual windlass which took a standard winch handle & was operated accordingly. Realise power may be an issue, but can get get 18V & even 24v portable drills these days. Might this set up be feasible, even if had to recharge the drill frequently?
 
Just checked. A standard 12v drill battery is 1500 milli amp Hours capacity.

Without doing the sums in full, that's probably about enough to pull an anchor up about 20 ft. I think there's going to be a major shortage of oomph in any small battery setup like that.

I am trying to get away from electricity, except perhaps if I build an unit, then it would make sense to have 12v or 24v powered the hydraulic pump for normal use, and have a manual support system in case the electrickery goes on strike.

Thanks for helping to develop the operating spec !
 
The main windlass manufacturers make electric/hydraulic versions for larger vessels. A hand operated pump on a hydraulic windlass to eliminate the electric motor seemed like a good idea. Might be too cumbersome with oil resevoir, pump unit and then the windlass.
 
Forget hydraulic, you want one of these:

el_winch.jpg
 
A fine example of a handraulic winch can be seen on many UK lock gates, where they are used for lifting the paddle sluices.

They are nearly as cumbersome as the one shown above though - you'd need a pretty big boat to accommodate a few of those!
 
Now Trucks have compact hydraulics powered from 12 or 24v - they power Tail Lifts ..... eg - my truck lift is rated to lift 1.5 T on the tail-gate.

The pump unit is about 4" x 4" x 20" ... sitting inside a square tube across the back of truck just behind the wheels. Only reason it's long is to get pipes etc. to both hydraulic rams.

Food for thought ?
 
Hydraulics are just a way of providing mechanical advantage - in the context of a windlass there is nothing you can do with hydraulics that you can't do as efficiently using more conventional gearing and leverage.

If the limitation on manual windlasses is simply the ability of the operator to keep pumping the handle then hydraulics will do nothing to help.
 
But you could pump the hydraulics off the engine. Another pulley... a little pump on the engine bed. My little Yanmar would be puffed if I tried to add a pump but even quite small Betas have a take off for a pump.
 
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