Dr. XIA De-Sheng, General Manager of JPHHOIST Lifting Equipment Ltd.
We had a chance talking to Dr. XIA De-Sheng, General Manager of JPHHOIST Lifting Equipment Ltd. last year. He is one of the forefront researchers for manual hoists, and he recently pushed a breakthrough in technology in the introduction of a new series of chain hoists that can automatically change gear and operate in a faster way compared to traditional chain hoists.
Dr. Xia researched in engineering materials and transmission in University. After he got a doctorate degree in Japan in the 90s, he entered a top notch lifting company in Japan and he took part in the research and development of new lifting products. He helped that company to obtain numerous technical patents and he gained reputation in the industry. In 2008, one of the hoists that he is the lead designer, a compact manual chain hoist, received the famous “Good Design Award” in Japan.
Over the years, Dr. Xia realized that the efficiency of manual chain hoists are low, which unnecessarily increases work time and increases the cost of the any lifting projects. Dr. Xia has been trying to find a solution to improve the efficiency of manual chain hoists. He finally succeeded in designing the new high-speed manual chain hoist which contains a new transmission mechanism. The new technology has already been patented in countries such as Japan, China, Taiwan, Korea, Canada, the USA, Germany and Australia.
Dr. Xia cooperated with Dennis Wong from VITALI-INTL Lifting Equipment Ltd. to form a joint-venture, JPHHOIST Lifting Equipment Ltd. The first model of the new hoist series is the 3.2T JPN High Speed Chain Hoist, which has been tested thoroughly and this 3.2T model is in large scale production now. According to plans, the whole series of 5T, 20T, 30T JPN High Speed Chain Hoists will be released starting in Summer 2018.
Dennis Wong (left), Managing Director of VITALI-INTL Lifting Equipment Ltd. and XIA De-Sheng (Dr.Eng.), General Manager of JPNHOIST Lifting Equipment Ltd. at CeMAT Asia 2017
“Our patented JPN High Speed Chain Hoists are designed to operate automatically in fast speed when there is no loads. In this way, the hoists are 5-10 times faster than traditional chain hoists. The target markets are European and North American countries. They are suitable for heavy lifting of long lifting range. We expect the yearly volume of the manual chain hoists to be around 5 million units worldwide. And the aforementioned target countries account for around 1.5 million units. We design our JPN High Speed Chain Hoists to replace traditional chain hoists eventually.”
“We have been promoting this new breed of hoists in various lifting equipment tradeshows around the world. The initial feedbacks are welcoming, especially lifting professionals from countries such as the USA, Germany and the Middle East.”
When talking about the past attempts to design “high-speed manual chain hoists”, Dr. Xia told us that the design documentations can be traced back to the 1930’s. There were high interests in the 50s and 60s. All the researchers aimed to raise the efficiency of manual chain hoists. There were many research outcomes and some got patented. But the designs were either not put into production and many of the researches ended somehow.
One problem is that manual chain hoists are mechanical designs, it is not practical to include any batteries or motors in the hoists. To improve efficiency, there must be a mechanical way to determine if there is heavy loads underneath, if so the hoist operates slowly, otherwise it moves rapidly. There must be a way to design the auto transmission that when there is a shift, say from low gear to high gear, there must not be a neutral gear in-between (whereas there exists a neutral gear in many current manual hoist designs). This smooth transmission must be enabled by a new mechanical design.
Dr. Xia has more than 20 years of experience in designing manual chain hoists. He has been focusing on solving this problem for a long time. Through dedication and never giving up, he finally succeeded to implement a new transmission mechanism into the new designs, thus the new JPN High Speed Chain Hoists were introduced to achieve high efficiency in lifting which was not possible before.
Dr. Xia’s latest patented design: JPN High Speed Chain Hoist
As a highly experienced engineer, Dr. Xia is eager to train newcomers to help them develop. He recalled he received good training when he worked in the company in Japan. He realized that a good designer should understand the way a product is manufactured.
“The product design can affect 70% of a product’s production cost. So a young designer should go out and observe, to understand the processes that a product goes through, from the design stage to every processes in the production. He should know what kind of machines the factory uses. Only in this way he can grasp the complete picture and work out a good design.”
“When a new engineer graduated from school, even though he is of a top caliber, and he is humble eager to learn, it is important for the enterprise to provide him a proper training for him to develop. At JPNHOIST, it is the jobs for the young engineers to do the design drawings. While I provide them with guidance of the design, they go to the drawing boards and should any questions or problems arise, I lead them to discover the way to solve problems. Now, our 3.2T JPN High Speed Chain Hoists have come into production. The next step would be a 1T design, I believe our engineers are well prepared and could complete most of the new tasks.”
When talking about the long term plans, Dr. Xia told us that the next stage is to lower the costs of production, so that the price may go down and more users can benefit from the efficiency gained from this new technology. There would be tremendous reduction in labor costs and work time. Another target is to work further on the mechanical structure to improve reliability and speed. Moreover, the technology can be adapted to other applications such as auto-transmission bicycles and industrial conveying belts for lifting.
