Why the lever design instead of the standard rack & pinion or screw type ?
This gets into the second major category of improvement. We wanted to make something easier and faster to use. The rack & pinion design is good but it has several drawbacks, one being the handle is never in the right spot to obtain good leverage. We found the screw type very cumbersome and time consuming. After trying several different designs we ended up going with the lever type actuator. The first advantage is that the handle lever is always in the right spot to get the most leverage. The second advantage is that the leverage ratio starts out at around 9.0:1 and ends up at about 32.0:1. This means that the more you compress the spring the more leverage you gain. This makes it nice for checking the open pressure on those big ones.
