Extendable apparatus

Question

Is there a kind of "handbook" for general engineering ideas and possible applications?  I vaguely remember a machinist friend mentioning some standard book to glean ideas from...
I'm in need of an extendable arm.  I wish to raise something into the air ~10-12 feet (with no anchor above), hold ~3-5 lbs, and be as compact as possible when retracted.  Telescoping mechanisms are the obvious choice, but I think their collapsed size makes them already too long (especially to reach 12 feet, with their sections being >2 feet).  I'd like to be able to carry this on a belt or small harness without being cumbersome.

My mind keeps turning to something like a retractable tape measure but I'm sure there's a better solution, and that's not stable enough to hold the weight steady.

Thanks in advance, I appreciate you reading this!

niels nielsen · Answer

the handboook is probably the McMaster-Carr Company parts catalog, which contains all sorts of mechanical gizmos and doodads available off-the-shelf for jobs like yours.

kamran · Answer

What you are asking is impractical and impossible to handle even in a scale that a normal person wrist can handle.

Basically anything that can deploy a load of 5lbs at a distance of 12 feet, if it has a handle that you describe in the order of 6 inches, will cause a torque of $$5*12ft/0.5ft=120lbs.ft $$  Which is beyond a regular man wrist power.

Biswajit Banerjee · Answer

For mechanical devices, a good source of information is "Mechanisms and Mechanical Devices Sourcebook" by Sclater and Chironis (McGraw-Hill, 2007).

Another good book is "507 Mechanical Movements - Mechanisms and Devices" by Brown.

A google search on "mechanisms" and "machine design" will throw up a lot of possibilities.  Beyond that, a patent search is a good idea.

Extendable apparatus

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