Ways to Lift Lids (as in opening coffin lids for Halloween props)

I thought I would offer some ideas on different ways to open box lids. My main motivation has been finding a good way for lifting the lid of small Halloween coffin props, but the techniques can be used for many other applications as well.

I love to play around making these things as a hobby, but I need to make smaller versions of these because I don’t have enough room for full-sized ones. Here’s an example of a nice full-sized one by MrTmartindale on YouTube.

Seeing as I was recently playing around with pulleys I thought I would start with probably the most basic way to lift a lid — with a string!

There are a lot of potential problems with this arrangement:

It’s visible.

You need to reverse the polarity on the motor for up and down directions.

It takes up a lot of space.

It needs a lot of parts: string, string pulley, pulley support, motor, motor pulley, motor mount, and some way to reverse the motor direction.