Types of Pulley

Pulley is usually a wheel with a groove in it, and a rope on the groove. The wheel may be of any size, and the length of the rope can be different from one another as well. The wheel is also known as a drum or a sheave. A compound pulley is an amalgamation of the moveable and straightforward pulley. It is also sometimes called a combination pulley. It is arranged to make an effort much less than half the weight of a load. It is prevalent at construction sites where cranes commonly lift heavy steel and concrete objects. A combination of pulley may consist of more than just two pulleys or ropes. The more pulleys are attached to the system, the easier it will be to lift the load. Compound pulleys are more often used in the large sailboats using other different ropes and pulleys. They are also used at various construction sites, which is required for the lifting of heavy equipment. This is how a compound pulley works.

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Five Types of Pulley

The fives types of pulleys and their functions are given below :

• Fixed

• Moving

• Block and Tackle

• Cone

• Swivel eye

Fixed Pulley

In this pulley, the wheel is fastened to a substantial and rigid structure while the rope is set loose. It will generally not allow any redirection of force. So in the place of lifting an object, the object can be easily pulled using this pulley.

Moving Pulley

In this particular pulley, the pulley's wheel is not fixed to any surface, but the rope is fastened to a stationary surface. A huge load is linked to the wheel rather than the rope, and when the rope is pulled up, the wheel can be noticed to slide up the rope along with the load. This needs a lot less work if compared to lifting the huge load directly.

Block and Tackle Pulley

It can minimize the effort which is required to move an object of dense mass. It has many movable and fixed pulleys designed in parallel with each other in such a way that fixed ones are fixed only, and movable pulleys are with the movables. Each and every pair is linked with another pair.

Cone Pulley

This particular pulley consists of multiple pulleys of cumulatively decreasing circumference piled on top of each other, gradually forming a cone shape. This arrangement allows the speed to shift proportional to the movement of pulleys. The best example of this system would be multi-gear bicycles.

Swivel Eye Pulley

In this particular pulley, this generally provides a dynamic rotation in which the rigid block holding the pulley wheel will rotate. This contributes to the application, which requires a small rotation when it is picking up the load. These can be used in amalgamation with fibrous, nylon or wire ropes.

These all five types of pulleys are highly useful in decreasing the workload, and all of them do the work efficiently to produce accurate results across all the operational fields.

Solved Examples

1. What are some real-life pulley examples?

Most of the weight-lifting exercise machines make the use of pulleys as a technique to control the angle at which weights are usually lifted while the weights are kept for themselves in a dedicated location. This makes the procedure of weight-lifting safer and more useful for the user than free weights, which may be done improperly.

Construction pulleys are one of the most basic and standard pulleys, and they are perfect for viewing the basic working of this simple machine. These pulleys include a wheel track which can be raised to great heights, fastened with chains or rope attached to hooks. These pulleys mainly allow equipment that is to be raised or lowered to workers at most construction sites for that they don't have to climb up or down to get tools or whatever materials they need. These are some real-life pulley examples.

Did You Know?

In some theaters as well as halls, curtains and fly systems are controlled using a system of many pulleys connected together. These pulleys are kept high above the stage where the audience can't see them, and they operate from such an angle of the side of the stage to uprise and lower curtains and pieces of scenery or any other prop during a theatrical performance.This is also a real life pulley example.