ME407

Summer 1 2013

Final Design Report

Scissor Jack Project

Ross Attardo, Clara de Barros, Shivani Patel

6/24/2013

Contents
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................................ 2
Design Vignettes ................................................................................................................................................................... 2
Preliminary Research ......................................................................................................................................................... 3
Sketches and Diagrams ...................................................................................................................................................... 5
Bill of Materials ...................................................................................................................................................................... 8
Jackscrew Change Log .............................................................................................................................................................. 9
Initial FEA Calculations ...................................................................................................................................................... 9
Revised FEA Calculations ............................................................................................................................................... 10
Revision Notes .................................................................................................................................................................... 10
Hinge Pin Change Log ........................................................................................................................................................... 12
Initial FEA Calculations ................................................................................................................................................... 12
Revised FEA Calculations ............................................................................................................................................... 12
Revision Notes .................................................................................................................................................................... 13
Top Bracket Change Log ...................................................................................................................................................... 14
Initial FEA Calculation ..................................................................................................................................................... 14
Final FEA Calculations ..................................................................................................................................................... 15
Revision Notes .................................................................................................................................................................... 15
Top Bracket Attachment Change Log ............................................................................................................................. 16
FEA Calculations ................................................................................................................................................................ 16
Arm Change Log ...................................................................................................................................................................... 17
Initial FEA Calculations ................................................................................................................................................... 17
Revised FEA Calculations ............................................................................................................................................... 17
Revision Notes .................................................................................................................................................................... 19
Base Change Log ...................................................................................................................................................................... 20
Initial FEA Calculations ................................................................................................................................................... 20
Revised FEA Calculations ............................................................................................................................................... 20
Revision Notes .................................................................................................................................................................... 21
Lessons Learned ...................................................................................................................................................................... 22
Rosss Lessons Learned .................................................................................................................................................. 22
Shivanis Lessons Learned ............................................................................................................................................. 22
Claras Lessons Learned ................................................................................................................................................. 22
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................................................. 23
Final Renders ............................................................................................................................................................................ 24
Updated Bill of Materials ..................................................................................................................................................... 25

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Initial Design Report

Introduction
The standard scissor jack allows a person to be able to lift multiple tons over a certain height,
allowing it to provide assistance in changing car tires and performing other repairs on vehicles.
The height that the jack is able to lift the load depends mainly on the jackscrew mechanism used
in the design. With the given design requirements of a load of 4,500 lbs and maximum input
force of 500 N, the length and pitch of the jackscrew for the initial CAD model were determined.
In the preliminary calculations, the length of the jackscrew was designed to be 18 inches long
and the pitch of the jackscrew was designed to be 8 threads per inch. These calculations are
further elaborated on in the Preliminary Research section of this report. The other parts of the
scissor jack include: four identical arms, two identical hinges for the joint where the arms and
jackscrew meet, a foot to serve as the base of the jack, a top bracket to hold the arms together,
and a top bracket attachment to allow the jack to rest easily in one of the jack points under a car.
In order to meet the requirement of a minimum extended height of 12 inches, the arm lengths
were designed to be 7 inches long. The geometric reasoning behind this can be seen in the
sketches included later in this report, as well as the Preliminary Research section. All parts of the
jack were modeled individually in SolidWorks and then assembled using the appropriate mates.

Design Vignettes
The top bracket of the jack was created with a simple design to serve the purpose of creating a
hinge with the upper arms of the jack. The basic shape of the bracket was a extruded rectangle
with the two longest top edges filleted to a radius of 0.5 inches. The outer edge of the extruded
rectangle was the offset inward to create a curve for the extruded cut that would hollow out the
rectangle, resulting in the bracket shape. The offset used for this curve was calculated in order to
maintain the brackets thickness of 1/8th inches. This thickness was chosen because it is the
minimum thickness of a plate of metal. The offset curve can later be edited if the thickness of the
bracket is deemed too thin. Next, all remaining edges of the bracket were filleted to give it a
polished look. After the fillets, the holes for the pins which would connect the arms to the
bracket were created using mirrored extruded cuts. Because these cuts were mirrored, changing
the size of one hole will change the size of all the others, keeping the holes consistent and
symmetric. Finally, the holes for the screws to attach the top bracket attachment were created,
using the same method, on the top of the bracket.
The center jackscrew was created in order to provide the axial direction in which the scissor jack
would be able to lift a load. The first step of the jackscrew was to make the threads. This was
done by first extruding a circle to the final jackscrew length. The end of this was then chamfered
to create ease for initial threading. A helix curve was then created with a pitch of 0.125 inches,
or 8 threads per inch, and to a length of the jackscrew minus the 0.20 inches that was chamfered.
This provided the path for which a small equilateral triangle would follow during a sweep
cut. Then, a hexagon was created and extruded to a height of half an inch for a circular loop that
would be used for the turn handle. The circular loop was created with a diameter of 1.5 inches to

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match the width of the hexagon and extruded around the mid-plane to 0.3 inches. The final step
was to make a cut extrusion of 1-inch diameter in order for the turn handle to fit easily.
The arms of the jacket were designed using the straight slot tool. The length was defined to be
seven inches to ensure that the jack could travel a minimum of twelve vertical inches. The width
of the arms was one inch. The slot was then extruded to a thickness of 0.125 inches. After that,
an extruded cut was performed to create the holes to pin the arms to the others parts of the jack.
The circles were concentric with the circular part of the slot and the diameter of all of the holes
was 0.125 inches. The base of the jack is the support of the assembly and was created from an
extruded rectangle. Two circles with 2.4 inches distance between their centers were sketched to
be the holes to pin the arms. To avoid stress concentration all edges were filleted. Then a boss
extruded was performed in the opposite direction to create the parallelepiped in contact with the
ground. This was extruded to 1.125 inches, which is half of the dimension length, generating half
of the base. The mirror tool was used and all of the features were mirrored. Changing dimensions
in a future design review are easier when the mirror tool is used.

Preliminary Research
The design requirements for the scissor jack called for a minimum extended height of 12 inches.
In order to meet this goal, the arms of the jack were designed to be 7 inches long. When two
arms are hinged together, as seen in the assembly, they extend to roughly 14 inches depending on
the angle of extension. The geometric representation provided in the Sketches portion of this
report illustrates this calculation and reasoning.
The standard threads per inch of the jackscrew is 8 TPI. Knowing this and the requirements
above of a minimum load of 4,500 lbs and maximum input force of 500 N, the formula1 for
mechanical work can be used to solve for the distance at which the input force is applied:
!!"#$ 2!"
=
!!"
!
Where Fload is the force the jack exerts on the load (4500lbs = 20,017 N), Fin is the rotational
force exerted on the handle of the jack (500 N), r is the length of the jack handle measured from
the screw axis to where the force is applied, and l is the lead of the screw (0.125in). This results
in an r value of:
20,017 0.125
!=

= 0.797 !"#!"
500
2!
This would be an uncomfortable length for the operator to use and a distance of 6 inches was
used in the design. This results in an applied force of:
0.125
!!" = 20,017
= 66.4!
2! 6
For most standard scissor jacks, the material used is described as Heavy Duty Steel. The
American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) developed a classification system for different types of
iron and steel alloys. After some research, it was determined that a Nickel-ChromiumMolybdenum steel alloy may be a possible material to construct the proposed scissor jack. This

1

http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/screw-jack-d_1308.html

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particular alloy has a classification of AISI 43202. This steel alloy has been noted as an important
engineering steel in industrial use3. However, if, after Finite Element Analysis, it is discovered
that the material affects the force calculations of the design, it may be changed to something
more appropriate.

2
3

http://www.matweb.com/search/datasheetText.aspx?bassnum=M432AM
http://tidewaterblacksmiths.net/1.html

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Sketches and Diagrams

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Bill of Materials

Part Name

Description

Filename

# Used in final
assembly

Base

Base for securing arms and in contact

with ground

Base.SLDPRT

Arms

Upper and Lower arms making up the

body of the jack

Arm.SLDPRT

Side Hinges

Hinge connecting upper and lower arms

Hinge.SLDPRT
and guides center jackscrew

Jackscrew

Center screw that when turned lifts the

scissor jack up and down

Top Bracket

Bracket connecting the four upper arms

and supports the top bracket
Top Bracket.SLDPRT
attachment

Top Bracket
Attachment

Attaches to the top bracket and

Top Bracket
supports the jack points underneath the
Attachment.SLDPRT
car

2 Cotter Pin

Cotter pin for securing upper arms

Pin_2.5.SLDPRT

3 Cotter Pin

Cotter pin for securing bottom arms

Pin_3.SLDPRT

.97 Square
Head Bolt

Square head bolt used for securing

arms to hinge

Side Screw.SLDPRT

Handle

Handle used for rotating jackscrew

Handle.SLDPRT

Top Screw

Flathead screw used to secure top

bracket attachment to top bracket

Top Screw.SLDPRT

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Center Screw.SLDPRT

Appendix A
Jackscrew Change Log
Initial FEA Calculations
The initial FEA analysis showed that the jackscrew would not be able to support the
structure. It was assumed to have a minimum angle of 6 . This resulted in an axial force of
64222lbs on the jackscrew. When this force was applied, there were extremely high stress
areas around the connection between the thread and the hexagon. The material was
chosen to be alloy steel (yield strength of 620,422,000N/m^2). The result of the initial FEA
analysis can be seen in the table and image below.

Name

Type

Min

Max

Stress1

VON: von Mises Stress

0 N/m^2
Node: 86339

1.16962e+009
N/m^2
Node: 74760

Center Screw-Study 2-Stress-Stress1

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Revised FEA Calculations

For the revised FEA calculations, a few changes were made. First, as seen in the initial
configuration, the handle connection area experiences zero stress. This is because it was
improperly assembled. This circle was moved down into the hexagon in order for the
connection to be realistically feasible. There was a lofted boss added between the threads
and the hexagon in order to decrease the localized stress in the connection. FEA was then
run again on the modified jackscrew with the original alloy steel material. Under the
revised FEA calculation, the part would still experience stresses above yield strength and
fail. In order to accommodate that, the minimum angle was increased from 6 to 8 and a
resulting axial force of 48500lbs. Under these conditions, the jackscrew was able to remain
functional during its use. The summary can be seen in the table and image below.
Name

Type

Min

Max

Stress1

VON: von Mises Stress

2895.17 N/m^2
Node: 3277

6.06677e+008
N/m^2
Node: 1599

Center Screw-Study 1-Stress-Stress1

Revision Notes
As mentioned above, there were two major changes made to the jackscrew during the
revision steps. The first was that the circle made for the connection to the handle. Upon
noticing that it experienced zero stress and zero deformation, it was determined that it was
not properly connected. The circle and face of the hexagon were originally tangent,

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meaning there was only one connection point between the two. This was physically
unreasonable and a change was made to recess it into the hexagon, providing a more
reasonable and stronger connection between the two pieces. The other major change was
the lofted boss added between the threads and hexagon. This allowed the axial force to be
distributed through the connection instead of abruptly at the original perpendicular
connection between the two. This greatly reduced the stress between the threads and
hexagon resulting in a stress below the yield strength of alloy steel.

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Appendix B
Hinge Pin Change Log
Initial FEA Calculations
The initial FEA analysis on the hinge connecting the arms of the scissor jack experienced a
stress greater than the yield strength of AISI 304. This could be a relatively simply fix by
simply changing the material to something stronger. However, the design itself will lend
itself to more failures than just the material properties, which will be revised in next model.
The table and image of the stress can be seen in the image below.

Name

Type

Min

Max

Stress1

VON: von Mises Stress

548453 N/m^2
Node: 3022

2.91389e+008 N/m^2
Node: 76758

Hinge-Study 1-Stress-Stress1

Revised FEA Calculations

The initial FEA calculations would have been a relatively simple fix. However, the design
itself was poorly made and was completely redesigned. The screws on the side of the hinge
that mounted the arms are prone to failure as the screws could back out as they are

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relatively shallow. Also, the hinge itself is of large size and not smoothly operable in the
scissor jack. The redesign was to make a rivet that would go through the arms, with a
center hole for the jackscrew to thread through. This design reduced the stress felt in the
hinge and the table and image of the stress concentrations can be seen in the image below.


Name

Type

Min

Max

Stress1

VON: von Mises Stress

177693 N/m^2
Node: 20810

1.44762e+008
N/m^2
Node: 49247

Hinge Pin-Study 2-Stress-Stress1

Revision Notes
As mentioned above, the revisions made were not based on the initial FEA calculations, but
the functionality of the piece. The large size was cumbersome in the assembly of the
scissor jack and the side screws not only reduced the strength of the hinge, but also lent
themselves to failure and backing out. The revisions made were to completely redesign the
piece and take a rivet approach. This would allow for a smaller piece and to also more
securely keep the arms in place. The ends would be flush against the arms and would
remove the side screws and the possibility of the arms falling off. In addition, the removal
of the side screws improved the strength of the piece, allowing for the continued use of AISI
304. The new design increased strength, functionality, and appearance of the scissor jack.

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Appendix C
Top Bracket Change Log
Initial FEA Calculation
In the initial Finite Element With the safety factor, the load was a total of 6750 lbf. The
force was directed downward normal to the top face of the bracket. The fixed faces were
the bottom edges of the bracket. The material selected was AISI 4130 Steel, normalized at
870C. The yield strength of this steel is 460,000,000 N/m2. Once the force was applied to
the bracket, the top face buckled, and failed the stress analysis because the stress
calculated exceeded the max yield stress. This can be seen in the figure Stress1 above. The
portion of the bracket depicted became elastic at this point. The average stress experienced
at this section, according to the scale provided, was roughly 700,000,000 N/m2. The image
below is an isoclipping of where the part failed and experienced a higher stress than the
yield stress of the material selected.

Name

Type

Min

Max

Stress1

VON: von Mises Stress

7.05491e+006 N/m^2
Node: 2709

1.18713e+009 N/m^2
Node: 4411

Top Bracket-Study 1-Stress-Stress1

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Final FEA Calculations

The same faces were fixed for the final FEA calculations, and the same load was applied to
the top of the bracket. Below is a table created by SolidWorks that depicts the stress
analysis of the part after revisions were made.

Name

Type

Min

Max

Stress1

VON: von Mises Stress

2.33463e+006
N/m^2
Node: 21884

3.4917e+008 N/m^2
Node: 23595

revised top bracket-Study 2-Stress-Stress1

Revision Notes

In order to relieve the stress experienced towards the center of the bracket, the thickness
of the material was changed from 1/8. The sides of the bracket were changed to 1/5
thickness, and the top portion was changed to as to support the load being applied. Also,
because the yield stress of the previous material was lower than the stress experienced by
the part, the material selected was changed to AISI 4340 annealed steel, which has a yield
stress of 470,000,000 N/m2. Also, the fillets along the top edges of the bracket were
reduced down to 0.05 so that the load was more evenly distributed.

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Appendix D
Top Bracket Attachment Change Log
FEA Calculations
The top bracket portion was designed to be the same material as the top bracket had been,
so it was analyzed as AISI 4340 annealed steel. Once this material was applied, the initial
FEA calculations showed little to no deformation and also resulted in stressed that were far
below the yeild stress of the material. Therefore, there were no changed made to the part,
and the initial FEA remained to be the final FEA as well. Below are the stress results.

Load name

Load Image

Load Details
Entities:
Reference:
Type:
Values:

Force-1

8 face(s)
Edge< 1 >
Apply force
---, ---, 1 N

Name

Type

Min

Max

Stress1

VON: von Mises Stress

0.447564 N/m^2
Node: 7985

734268 N/m^2
Node: 19232

Top Bracket Attachment-Study 1-Stress-Stress1

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Appendix E
Arm Change Log
Initial FEA Calculations
The jack has to withstand a vertical load of 4500lb with a safety factor of 1.5, which results
in 6750lbf. As there were four arms, each one had to withstand 16187lbf.
The figure bellow shows the calculations made to determine the critical force applied to the
arm. It occurs when the jack is almost closed and the angle with the horizontal axis is 6.

One of the holes was fixed and a force of 1687lbf was applied in the other hole. After
running the simulation in SolidWorks, it was noticed that it buckled and this design failed
the test. The deformation is almost 1.5 millimeters, which is plastic deformation.

The possible solutions were changing the design and changing the material. One purposed
change was to join two arms, which would make the jack more stable.

Revised FEA Calculations

The arms were redesigned. The driving change was connecting each two arms to make
them more stable. This change alone was not enough to stand the load and the thickness

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was also altered from 1/8in to 1/4in. When changing the center screw it was determined
that the minimum angle of 6 was a critical parameter that was making the design really
difficult. It was decided that the minimum angle should be 8.
The load applied in the new FEA analysis was 14965lbf, this was calculated the same way
as before, changing the angle and the number of arms. This designed was approved in the
FEA analysis as the von Misses stress is always bellow the yield strength, which means no
plastic deformation. Notice that the maximum deformation decreased from1.5mm to
0.214mm.

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Revision Notes
The major changes made to the arms were connecting two arms and changing the
thickness. It definitely accomplished the goal of making the jack more stable. The decision
of changing the minimum angle could affect the design criteria that established that the
jack ha to travel a minimum of twelve inches and to ensure that the length was changed to
7.5in.
An important impact of joining the arms was having to design two different parts, the top
arm and the bottom arm. The width of them is different as one of them has to go inside the
other when assembling the parts. The FEA shown here was generated using the top arm.
The same analysis was made for the bottom arm and the results were really similar.

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Appendix F
Base Change Log
Initial FEA Calculations
The base of the jack had a simple design that can be easily manufactured. The material used
is AISI 4340 Steel, as defined in the Initial Report. The base passed the first test as the
stress is never bigger than the yield strength.

Revised FEA Calculations

The only change made to the base was its width. To ensure geometric compatibility the
width was altered from 2.5in to 3.46in as a result in the change of the thickness of the arms.
The new design also passed the FEA analysis. The maximum deformation is 0.016mm.

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Revision Notes

The change made to the base was a minor one and did not impact the FEA analysis. While
designing the base it was noticed that fillets and rounded surfaces are preferable to stand
big loads.

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Appendix F
Lessons Learned
Rosss Lessons Learned
The major hardship faced through the design process was the modeling of the threads.
This presented a challenge because I had never used SolidWorks before and I was unaware
of many of the features used to finally create them (namely the swept boss around a helix).
Going along the lines of the thread creation, the other hardship faced was to accurately
mate the screw to the hinge in the final assembly. We never received any guidance on the
SolidWorks mates for an assembly and it was mostly done by trial and error. The other
minor hardship was the hinge design. I was unfamiliar with the process that many current
scissor jacks use and went through three completely different designs before settling on
one. The success of the design process was when it finally came all together. There were
many revisions made as a group in order for everything to properly align and fit together
as a working unit. In addition to the final assembly as a success, going through so many
different design techniques allowed me to get a better understanding of SolidWorks and
the ways in which to design was also a success of the design process.

Shivanis Lessons Learned

Initially creating the parts in SolidWorks was fairly straightforward, however, revising
after FEA calculations did prove to be a challenge. Since the parts I created were at the top
of the jack and supported a large normal force, I saw that the top bracket part would have
to be redesigned in order to meet the design requirements. After researching more
materials and editing the filets of the bracket in order to allow for thicker walls, I was
finally able to create a piece that was successful and still fit well in the assembly. Another
challenge was assembling the jack itself. The three of us had very little experience with the
different mates in the program, and it took a lot of guessing and checking. Overall, working
together on some revisions and the assembly proved to be very helpful in the end, giving us
a scissor jack assembly that we were proud to have constructed after only a few weeks of
SolidWorks experience. We were able to take our basic skills and develop them further
through the design process and use of the FEA calculations.

Claras Lessons Learned

Assembling the parts in SolidWorks was a challenge. It was difficult at the beginning to
choose the mates to use and get a jack that worked without any geometrical
incompatibility. The motion of the jack was weird in the first design and the screw mate
was hard to understand. In the final design assembling was already a little easier, which
allowed us to explored the advanced mates tool and constrain the motion of the jack to
something much more realistic. The distance that the jack could travel was limited to 12
inches by defining the minimum and the maximum distance between the edges of the base
and the top bracket to be between 1 and 13 inches. Also the distance between the hinges
was limited. For me it was also very nice to able to perform the FEA analysis. The
simulation tool in SolidWorks allows us to understand stress and strain in complex
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geometries when analytical solution would take a big amount of time. The analysis is done
by making some assumptions and creating nodes and elements in each component with the
mash tool. Then the computer is able to make a huge amount of calculations with each of
the elements and get to a converging solution.

Conclusion
The first step in the design process was creating initial sketches to meet the design
requirements. Using the equation discussed earlier in this report in the Initial Design
Report section, the jackscrew was designed to be 8 threads per inch (TPI) in order to meet
the maximum 500 N input force requirement. Next, the arms were designed to lift a
minimum of 12 inches when fully extended. The initial CAD models were then created and
assembled to show how the parts fit together and if the design was geometrically and
physically feasible. After FEA calculations on the unique parts designed, each team member
worked on revisions independently and then met to make final revisions. Together,
revisions on the upper and lower arms were made in order to adjust them to properly mate
with the new hinge pins that were created. These revisions can be reviewed in each of the
Revision Notes sections of their respective appendices. Finally, a new assembly was created
with the appropriate mates to again make sure the design was feasible and met the design
requirements. Finally, one last round of FEA calculations was done on every unique part in
order to assure they showed satisfactory performance under the 4500lb force with a safety
factor of 1.5. The final assembly can be seen in the Final Renders section of the following
Appendix G.

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Appendix G
Final Renders

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Updated Bill of Materials

Part Name
(Creator)
Base
(Clara)
Arms
(Clara)
Side Rivet
(Ross)
Jackscrew
(Ross)
Top Bracket
(Shivani)
Top Bracket
Attachment
(Shivani)
3 Cotter Pin
3.2 Cotter Pin
Handle
(Ross)
Top Screw

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Description

Filename

Base for securing arms and

in contact with ground
Upper and Lower arms
making up the body of the
jack
Rivet connecting the upper
and lower arms with hole for
center jackscrew
Center screw that when
turned lifts the scissor jack
up and down
Bracket connecting the four
upper arms and supports the
top bracket attachment
Attaches to the top bracket
and supports the jack points
underneath the car
Cotter pin for securing upper
arms
Cotter pin for securing
bottom arms
Handle used for rotating
jackscrew
Flathead screw used to
secure top bracket
attachment to top bracket

Base.SLDPRT

# Used in
final
assembly
1

Arms Bottom.SLDPRT

Arms Top.SLDPRT

Hinge Pin.SLDPRT

Center Screw.SLDPRT

Top Bracket.SLDPRT

Top Bracket
Attachment.SLDPRT

Pin_3.SLDPRT

Pin_3.2.SLDPRT

Handle.SLDPRT

Top Screw.SLDPRT