Chain Hoists & Winches

Hoists and winches lift vertically. A chain hoist puts tonnes within one person's reach through a gearbox and a hand chain; the electric version does the same job on a button, and much faster. A lever hoist both lifts and pulls on a short lever, which also makes it the tool for horizontal tensioning. A wire rope puller runs the rope through the body, so its reach is the length of rope you feed it. Tripod winches build their own anchor point where there is nothing overhead — over a shaft or a manhole. For all three, the first figure to check is lift height: the chain or rope length is a hard limit on how far the load can travel.