Lifting assembly

Abstract

A lifting assembly for use with vacuum pads or the like includes a hollow load beam having a longitudinal slot in its bottom wall, a cross arm, and means suspending the cross arm below the load beam. The suspending means include a traversing member positioned within the load beam and above the longitudinal slot; roller means attached to the traversing member and in rolling contact with the internal surface of the load beam on either side of the slot; a non-rotatable traverse plate exterior to the load beam and below the traversing member; a rotation plate below and in rotationally sliding contact with the traverse plate, the top surface of the cross arm being attached to the bottom surface of the rotation plate; support means, preferably a vertical bolt, supporting the cross arm, rotation plate, and traverse plate below the traversing member and defining a vertical axis of rotation; and releasable means for locking the cross arm in any desired position along the load beam. In a preferred embodiment, releasable means are also provided for quickly and easily fixing the cross arm in any of several preselected angular positions with respect to the load beam.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.