An electrode lifting apparatus provides a mechanism for lifting a free electrode in a vertical orientation and moving the free electrode suspended below the lifting apparatus to a location for a joining procedure with another electrode or portion of an electrode. The electrode lifting apparatus also supports the free electrode during a joining procedure that includes driven rotation of the free electrode by an electrode torque station. The electrode lifting apparatus includes a bail and a body, the body having a yoke and a housing. First and second arms on the body connect the housing to the yoke. The body may angularly rotate relative to the relatively fixed bail about a reference vertical axis during driven rotation of the free electrode by the torque station. A threaded stem attached to the bail provides a threaded engagement with the yoke allowing such relative angular rotation in some embodiments.

Group online communication and collaboration has become part of people's daily life. Therefore, it is critical to provide a meeting initiator to efficiently present his/her information, and control his/her presented information. It is also critical for the speed and efficiently to process the meeting initiator's requests for his/her presented information to be quickly reaching to other meeting participants during a meeting. This invention facilitates a unique user interface (UI) for the meeting initiator to efficiently present information and to control presented information through a unique withdrawing (un-post) operation. Specially, this invention deploys dynamic workspaces technology together with post and un-post (withdraw) operations that greatly improves the speed and efficiency for processing the meeting initiator's requests and for monetizing the meeting activities.

A clamping device for lifting and transferring objects can employ slanting interfaces to convert a pulling action on the clamping device to a clamping action on the object. Components of the clamping device can include a metal core embedded in a body of a different material. The embedded core construction can allow a simplified fabrication of the clamping device for high stresses, high forces, high durability and high reliability.

A clamping device for lifting and transferring objects can employ slanting interfaces to convert a pulling action on the clamping device to a clamping action on the object. A pulling element in the form of a triangle can be disposed between a jaw and a jaw support of the clamping device. When the pulling element is pulled up, the base of the triangle shape pulling element can exert a force on the jaw against the jaw support, for securing a gripping action on the object.

A lifting device is disclosed in which tong arms are coupled to parallel laminated horizontal spine members that slide in opposition to each other via input of force from the tong arms. The horizontal spine members are coupled to load-engaging feet to transfer the force of the tong members to a given load. The horizontal spine members include teeth or the like along a horizontal axis for engagement and indexing of the load-engaging feet.

The virtual presentation technology in this invention can significantly reduce data load on a network and thus reduce the network bandwidth requirement. This allows serving more requests for data transaction over a network with fixed network bandwidth. In addition, with traditional Internet file sharing products, e.g. the then-existed Yahoo Group online service, in order to stop sharing a file, the file must be physically deleted that prevents resharing the file unless expensively recreating them. In addition, traditional email and instant message does not allow a user to delete a previously posted or shared message from a UI of a recipient. Therefore, the user could be embarrassed if the posted message is not proper to the recipient. This invention has overcome the problems to allow user instantly deleting posted information of file or folder from recipient's UI without physically deleting the file, and deleting previously posted messages from recipient's UI.

A gravity activated lifting claw for help in moving and gripping a wide range of objects of various sizes and shapes. The gravity activated lifting claw includes a link and slide structure that allows for configurations with varying number of gripping arms. The gravity activated claw is self-opening when the claw is slacked. The embodiments of the lifting claw are cheaply and easily configurable with a wide range of material handling machinery.

A gravity activated lifting claw for help in moving and gripping a wide range of objects of various sizes and shapes. The gravity activated lifting claw includes a link and slide structure that allows for configurations with varying number of gripping arms. The gravity activated claw is self-opening when the claw is slacked. The embodiments of the lifting claw are cheaply and easily configurable with a wide range of material handling machinery.

A raising device realized to be connected to a tower segment of a wind turbine is provided. The raising device comprises a connection member to a raising machine and a plurality of holding members positioned at predefined distances from each other and orientated to be movable in radial locking directions which locking directions are such that the holding members when moved into a locking position at a predefined engagement position of the tower segment engage with a counter-shape of the tower segment, whereby the holding members are automatically tiltable and/or shiftable into the locking position by a movement mechanism. A method of equipping a tower segment of a wind turbine for transport by means of such raising device is also provided.

A scissor-type lifting clamp has two locking clutches, one on each side of a central plane separating hoisting arms of the clamp, for automatically locking the clamp in an opened configuration. The use of two locking clutches reduces the overall vertical distance through which the scissor arms need to travel in order to lock the scissor arms in the opened configuration once an object gripped by the clamp is delivered by the clamp, thereby permitting the use of the clamp with a smaller vehicle, such as a skid steer. A height adjustable outrigger oriented to engage a top of the object to be clamped cooperates with the two locking clutches to further reduce required overall vertical travel distance of the clamp to lock the clamp in the opened configuration.