Have you ever wondered how we manage to stay safely in control of a passenger / goods lift while carrying out a safety inspection within the lift shaft area?

This yellow coloured control box unit on top of the actual lift car allows the competent person to be in total control of the lift whilst riding on top of the lift. The lower left ‘normal / inspection’ function switch enables the engineer to switch off public control of the lift and to allow car top operation only during inspection mode.

The top right push button is called the ‘common’ or ‘run’ button which has to be pressed at the same time as pressing either the up or down direction button to activate lift travel.

These buttons are what we call constant pressure switches as they are spring returned and require a constant pressure to keep them engaged.

This is actually a safety feature to prevent accidental lift travel during an inspection. It also requires both hands to operate these buttons thus keeping your limbs and body within the confines of the car top when travelling up and down the lift shaft.

Like all modern day electrical control units, it also has an emergency stop switch seen here in the top left corner. This emergency stop switch is the ‘mushroom head’ type and when pressed it stays latched in cutting power to the lift until pulled back out.

The car top control unit even has a 110v supply socket for power tools etc.