Demag all terrain assists dam construction

As narrow and steep mountain roads had to be used in order to reach the work site, Sachsein-headquartered family-owned company Fanger chose this crane model for its compactness and manoeuvrability. In addition, the crane had the lifting capacity required to carry out the lifts.

The AC 160-5 had to be prepared for the multi-hour trip. The counterweight base plate had to be removed in order to reduce the weight to less than 60t. The plate was loaded, together with the required counterweight and other accessories, onto two trucks.

The journey posed challenges to Fanger’s team because of tight curve radii and having to drive through tunnels. “Sometimes we only had a few centimeters between the crane and the tunnel walls, meaning that our operator was threading the machine through the eye of the needle, so to speak,” said Josef Waser, head of Cranes & Transport at Fanger. A signalperson made sure everything went smoothly. 

Once the crane reached the job site, there were just 6m between the guardrails for the set up. “We couldn’t extend the outriggers all the way to the edge of the dam due to safety reasons, so we were limited to an actual width of 5.4m after consulting with the responsible engineer,” Waser explained.

The Demag AC 160-5 with the IC-1 Plus control system and a small outrigger spread of 5.3m, proved to be the right choice for the job.

In order to be able to lower the suction excavator components, a pontoon, pipes, and other materials—weighing up to 7.8t—130m down onto the reservoir, the crane was equipped with a 32.9m main boom and 46t of counterweight.  Due to the dam’s convex contour, Fager’s team had to work with a radius of up to 27.5m.