Time Saving Solutions with Crane Attachments

By Seth Skydel

While you’d be correct that the proper crane is the key to safely and efficiently handling complicated and time-consuming lifts, you’d also be remiss to not mention the importance of crane attachments. In many cases, it is those technologies that allow crane operators to design solutions to difficult lifting challenges. Here are a few examples:

Iowa Terminal Solutions

Twenty minutes is precisely how long it took the Radcliffe, Iowa-based company, to move a 100' tall, 30-ton corn dryer 20'. A key element in the successful lift was a collector ring from LGH, a rental equipment provider. Custom made for LGH, collector rings used for lifting domes or circular tanks come with slings and shackles to affix to each of the lifting points.

“Our goal was to have 16 pick points on the dryer so the weight was equally distributed,” explained Iowa Terminal Solutions Owner and President Travis Remsburg. “With a collector ring from LGH we were able to use a series of cables at five-foot intervals instead of terminating to the hook. The ring expanded the pick diameter and carried the weight smoothly.”

The move also required about four hours of rigging time, but in the end the proper crane attachment minimized labor and helped exceed safety requirements. “The alternative would have been to take 10 days to dismantle the corn dryer into sections, move the pieces one at a time, and reassemble it,” Remsburg added.

Deep South Crane & Rigging

Headquartered in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Deep South offers its unique Module Lifting System. The 100-ton capacity solution is designed to set multiple objects of different widths, length, and centers of gravity with the same rigging. The system employs specialized spreader bars and built-in hydraulic cylinders to level loads in the transverse direction and multi-holed lower modular bars that level loads in the longitudinal direction.

For a process plant overhaul, Deep South was called on to lift and set 84 modules, including three towers (one measuring 100' long and weighing 350,000 lbs.) as well as various pieces of equipment, such as piping, tanks, PDC buildings, and transformers. Many of the modules had offset centers of gravity further complicating the lift and set.

With its Module Lifting System and strategically placed spreader bars and other attachments, Deep South completed the moves safely and as quickly as possible. The company pointed out that conventional methods would have required using multiple sets of rigging that would have needed to be disassembled, adjusted, and reassembled for each lift.

The Deep South stable of equipment includes numerous spreader bars and lift beams up to 1600-ton capacity and slings of various construction and lengths. The company also designed and manufactured a 930-ton capacity octagon spreader bar that was first used to lift an 800,000-lb regenerator head that required a vertical pull on the lifting lugs.

Barnhart

A Memphis, Tennessee-based family run company, Barnhart, had been hired to replace two miter gates at a lock and dam in Kentucky. The job required bringing a super capacity barge-mounted heavy lift crane based on the Gulf Coast up several rivers to the lock and dam site.

The crane, named Big Al, which is able to lift loads of over 400 tons, was needed to handle the 468,000-lb. gates that had been delivered by deck barge. Using its adjustable rigging link system, the gates were then set in place safely and ahead of schedule.

Barnhart boasts one of the nation’s largest inventories of equipment for alternative lifting, including below-the-hook rigging tools. It routinely fields a variety of attachment solutions, including a range of fork, hanger, and lift beam configurations in varied lengths and capacities.

Among the suppliers offering crane users a wide range of attachment products from several manufacturers are:

• Boscaro crane attachments supplied by Bigfoot Crane Company includes concrete buckets, pallet forks, self-dumping bins, spreader bars, and crane baskets. Also available are materials handling, brick handling and stacking bins, mobile cages, clamshell, mortar and muck buckets, and jersey barrier grabbers. All Boscaro crane attachments meet or exceed ASME and OSHA regulations.
• Heiden operates a Crane Attachments Division that manufactures a line of uniquely engineered crane-truck attachments including pole and pipe grapples, log and pulp grapples, railroad grapples, trash grapples, pallet forks, wallboard forks, roof hoppers, dump boxes and clam buckets. Heiden Crane Attachments feature interchangeable components that reduce your overall investment.
• KINSHOFER crane attachments includes an extensive product range. In North America, the company’s most popular attachments are 4-ton and 6-ton rotators, self-leveling pallet forks, universal hydraulic forks (drywall forks), railroad grapples, and barrier lifters. The Department for Special and Custom Solutions at KINSHOFER handles requests for design, construction, purchase, sales, assembly, delivery, and service of attachments as needed.
  • Different accessories complement KINSHOFER crane attachments, including suspension links for standard cranes, without and with pendulum damper, and quick hitch systems, reductions links and hooks, and scrapers, load hooks and digging extensions. According to the company, all crane applications can be supplied with custom-fit tools adapted to a customer’s needs.