Terex Comedil and Peiner join forces on Cincinnati hospital project

HD23-TS212, HD23-TS23, TS23-H20 and TS23-TS21 Transfer Mast sections are designed to allow components of Terex's Comedil luffers and Peiner hammerheads to be used together.

Through the $200m expansion project, 60 acres of land is being used to provide an additional facility that will give patients access to a new cancer centre, an orthopedics centre and can accommodate open-heart surgery procedures.

Work on the site required cranes with a minimum freestanding under-hook of 214ft, due to wind load rating requirements of 45mph in-service and 94mph out-of-service mandated in the city of Cincinnati.

Maxim’s tower crane division already owned 100 tower cranes, all of which are Terex cranes. With most of these being hammerhead tower cranes it has nearly 1,000 300tm–400tm hammerhead tower crane sections in its yard, along with 150 500tm hammerhead tower crane sections and 80 tower sections for its four existing luffing jib and flat-top tower cranes.

Tower operations manager for Maxim Crane Works, Matt Hyden, says that the ability to use the firm’s existing heavy-duty tower sections means greater flexibility for the firm’s fleet of hammerhead tower cranes in states with tough wind load requirements.

He said: “Before, we had to pass on these types of jobs, since we could only reach 100ft freestanding height in Florida with our hammerhead cranes.

“By gaining the extra height with the transfer masts and heavy duty tower sections, this has opened up markets that were previously closed to Maxim Crane. We can get an additional 80ft to sometimes 100ft of freestanding height by mixing tower sections with the transfer masts.”

The firm also benefitted from being able to save on the cost of tower sections for the two new SK575-32s by using the Transfer Masts to incorporate some of its existing, underutilised stock of tower sections.

Hyden explained that as jobs requiring a crane's maximum freestanding height are infrequent, the company often had a lot of unused tower sections for its luffing jib and flat-top tower cranes laying idle in its yard.

“We had excessive inventory for such a small number of cranes. We had 40 unused luffing jib tower segments. Purchasing the transfer masts allowed us to use those towers with the new cranes, so we could more efficiently use our inventory and save money on the crane purchase price.”

In this case Maxim saved the cost of an additional 10 tower sections, and Terex says the four new Transfer Mast types improve the flexibility of application not just for hammerhead tower cranes, but also for Terex flat-top and luffing jib cranes.

Explaining the rationale behind the Transfer Masts, sales director for Terex Cranes, Matthew Dobbs, said: “The luffing jib and flat-top cranes are Terex Comedil legacy brand designs, while the hammerhead crane line originated from our Terex Peiner legacy brand. Bringing the two designs together in order that any Terex crane could be used with any tower section was one of the final connections we had to make, so these designs would be true Terex tower cranes.”