Terex Superlift 3800 Crawler Challenged by Factory Lift
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October 14, 2014 - Stefan Oerter, part of the technical field staff for crane service provider Viktor Baumann of Bornheim, Germany, explained the project to remove press components at a factory was a "matter of centimenters." The three press components were lifted out of the SGL Carbon factory in Bonn, Germany, with a Terex Superlift 3800 crawler crane with the manufacturer's assistance in order to carry out the challenging work.
Terex Superlift 3800 makes
challenging press lift.
Baumann was using its Terex Superlift 3800 crane for the first time, having ordered the crane only five weeks before the project took place. The crane was picked up on the day it needed to be set up at the site. To transport the carrier to the work site, Viktor Baumann used its own heavy goods vehicles: The basic machine, including the assembled A-frame, was transported by a nine-axle vehicle, while two five-axle vehicles took care of the tracks. “We didn’t even remove the winches from the basic unit before heading back to the work site, which means we were traveling with a total weight of just under 94 tonnes (103.6 US tons),” explains Oerter, who was responsible for planning the project. The company had the remaining components shipped in 40-tonne trucks.
Three days were allocated for setting up the Terex Superlift 3800 unit at the site. “And we were able to get it done on time, even though space was really at a premium,” reports Oerter. The crane was assembled with a 220-tonne (242.5 US ton) assist crane, and five people helped set it up, including two Terex technicians.
Due to the fact that there was not much space available at the site, a finely honed logistics strategy was required in order to be able to quickly set up the machine. “Since we were only able to get one truck at a time to the place where we would be setting up the crane, we had to load and drive up the trucks in such a way that we would be able to assemble the delivered components directly,” explain Peter Laduch and Gerald Skrotzki, service technicians forTerex Cranes.
The challenging lift involved three large components to an enormous pressm which had to be lifted out from the SGL plant in three days. Two of these components weighed 270 tonnes (297.6 US tons), while the lighter one was 200 tonnes (220.4 US tons). In order to handle these lifts, the team set up the crane with an SSL configuration, a heavy 48-meter (157.5 ft) main boom, and a 36-meter (118.1 ft) SL mast. 165 tonnes (181.9 US tons) of counterweight were placed on the crane’s superstructure, with 320 tonnes (352.7 US tons) on the SL counterweight tray. With this configuration, the Superlift 3800 crane was well prepared to lift the press components at a working radius of 26 meters (85.3 ft).
The press was located in between other plant equipment, meaning that the loads would have five or six centimeters of space around them at certain points during the lifts. “It was absolutely vital to prevent the components from swinging around while they were being lifted. If they had, their enormous weight would have caused damage to the production equipment surrounding them,” says Oerter. “However, the Superlift 3800 can be operated with such laser-like precision that there was no danger of anything going wrong at any moment,” reports crane operator Dennis Ferber.
This project required the Terex Superlift 3800 crawler crane to put many of its capabilities to use. The crane not only had to walk with load, but its working radius, as well as that of the Superlift, was changed during the lifts, and the Terex Variolift system proved to be particularly helpful. “The bottom line is that our first project with our new Superlift 3800 showed that we chose the right crane – both in terms of the machine’s performance and of the top-notch services provided by the manufacturer. In fact, Terex provided us with invaluable support all the way from the purchase, through project planning, to the lifts themselves,” Oerter said.
