Machinery moving
When OP Plastics decided to relocate its premises in Rosslyn, Pretoria the constraint imposed by number one client – BMW South Africa – was that its injection moulding machinery could not be out of commission for more than one working week. Given this challenge, Johannesburg-based rigging specialist Vanguard concluded that to dismantle and relocate the machine in the conventional manner would take far too long and thus decided to move the 275t clamping unit intact.
This had never been attempted before. Sandretti, the Italian manufacturer of the machinery, said it was impossible. After much planning and two visits to the Sandretti facility in Italy, however, the Vanguard engineers produced a viable solution. Two independent EZ Lifter gantries were used, working in tandem, not so much because of the implied mass of 275t but because they had to give the necessary support to prevent any damage to the machine. In this way the huge injection moulder was relocated from shutdown to start up at the new factory in just four working days.
Vanguard mechanical service engineer Luigi Angelozzi says: ‘To lift the unit in one piece, we had to ensure that no side loads or distortion to the main frame was created and that the machine remained level at all times. The tandem lift with two gantries made this possible’.
Strut crane has hydrogen project covered
The UK subsidiary of Belgian lifting and crane hire company Sarens was commissioned to make several lifts on the Huntsman hydrogen project being carried out by Foster Wheeler Energy for BOC Gases at the Huntsman North Tees Works in north east England.
Sarens UK provided all the planning, engineering consultancy and technical support for the lifts on a managed contract lift basis.
The 18 week contract involved installing various vessels and erecting a reformer package. Heaviest of the lifts was more than 110t and the largest radius was more than 56m. The client specified that disruption to the site had to be minimised so the cranage had to be capable of installing all the items from one location. Sarens’ Demag TC 2400, a 400t capacity lattice boom truck crane was deployed for the task, rigged initially for the heaviest lifts with a 60m main boom and 225t of superlift counterweight. To reach the far side of the plant from its set up zone, the crane was re-rigged with 84m of boom.
Liebherr’s big crawler demonstrates its flexibility
Visitors to the Bauma fair in April will have seen Liebherr’s new LR 1600/1 600t-rated crawler crane that also has duties as a pedestal crane.
The pedestal version debuted earlier this year on the construction of the A44 road bridge over the river Rhine. A benefit of the concept was realised in positioning the 35m-high pylon posts which had to be welded in situ. ‘The crane would not have been in a position to work on crawlers as it had to be supported on precisely specified foundation pressure points,’ explains Uwe Langer, boss of Mainz crane company Riga.
The crane was rigged with 56m of main boom and 245t of counterweight. When placing each pylon, at a radius of 13.5m, the gross load on the hook was 300t.
The supporting base of the pedestal crane is 12.6m by 12.6m, compared with the 8.8m by 10.6m of the crawler pads. According to Langer the ability of the crane to extend its superstructure 2m to the rear is a key advantage as it increases capacity by up to 30%.
Riga transports the basic structural components of the crane as a 27m long vehicle. A four-axle tractor unit with gooseneck is followed by a three-axle dolly. The crawler centre section, 7.2m long and 3m wide, is pinned between the dolly and a five-axle trailer. The complete train has a gross weight of 128t.
Felbemayr, an Austrian lifting contractor and crane hire company, used its new LR 1600/1 on crawlers to place a 520t reactor at a refinery in Schwedt, close to Germany’s border with Poland.
Taking the chart to the limit, the crane was rigged with 56m of main boom, a 31.5m derrick boom and 665t of ballast, including 350t on the telescoping counterweight trailer. Maximum counterweight trailer ballast is 400t.
The 44m-high reactor was raised to vertical by the LR 1600/1 working at a 16m radius . Gross load on the hook was 547t. As the lift progressed the counterweight trailer was extended from 15m to 18m to increase the moment.
Getting Odense back into action
German manufacturer Man Takraf has supplied a new gantry crane to the Odense Shipyard in Denmark to replace the one that blew down in heavy storms in December 1999 (News Feb00, p4). Mammoet, which had the contract to remove the wreck of the old crane, was called on again to lift the new gantry into place.
Components of the new crane arrived at the shipyard on a seagoing pontoon. The three sections of the crane beam ranged from 675t to 800t in weight. When assembled the giant beam weighed 4,500t.
Two lifting gantries were erected to position the girder at a height of 100m. On each gantry were four strand jacks, each rated at 900t. The lifting gantries themselves were stabilised by four strand jacks of 100t capacity and six tension guyed cables secured by 600t anchored strand jacks.
What made the job a little more challenging was that the crane beam had a hinged leg weighing 400t attached to it at one end, as shown in the picture. Four lots of six-axle self-propelled modular trailers under each side of the hinged leg brought them to vertical as the crane beam rose. A fixed leg at the other end of the beam was positioned later using a Gottwald AK 1200 and a Demag CC 4200 crawler.
The 900t strandjacks used on this project are the same as those being used this month to salvage the Kursk submarine, although rather more are needed for the project – 26 units will be used there, mounted on a barge.
Lifting a column onto a plinth
At Indian Oil Corporation’s Haldia refinery in West Bengal, India, Bharat Heavy Plate & Vessel (BHPV) fabricated a 560t vacuum column. Safety and quality considerations persuaded BHPV to fabricate the column in one piece at ground level – normally these columns are erected in multiple sections in India. BHPV contracted PSC Heavy Lift to erect the 61m-high column onto an 18m high plinth early this year.
PSC Heavy Lift employed its Towerlift and strand jack systems for this lift. The Towerlift system was set up on the plinth, which meant that when the column was delivered lying on the ground it could not get under the lifting tower. This meant that the lift had to be made out of plumb. The main lifting cables were off line by up to 11° as the head of the column reached the top of the plinth. The lifting cable angle caused a horizontal load at the head of the Towerlift that was compensated by 50t rated guy jacks designed for wind speeds of up to 200km/h, while the vessel was held back from the plinth by another two 50t strand jacks.
A pair of crawler cranes, a Demag CC 2000 and a Manitowoc M 4100, were used as tailing cranes. To prevent horizontal loads being sustained by these cranes, additional guy cables were used to hold back the tail of the column.
Grohmann’s road bridge removal
New to German rental company Grohmann-Attollo this year is a 1,000t-capacity derrick version Liebherr LTM 1800 mobile crane, previously owned by Ainscough of the UK. In June it lifted out an old motorway bridge on the A10 near Königs Wusterhausen. A four-track railway line ruled out a tandem lift so a single crane was needed to lift 110t at a 34m radius.
Working during a two-day railway line closure, the crane was equipped with its 31.5m derrick boom and the main boom telescoped to 50.7m, plus 320t of counterweight.
Eight girders were cut from the bridge abutments, supported and lifted away in turn by the crane at a radius of 34m. Meanwhile, counterweight was added and removed as needed. The crane rotated almost 180° with each pick but it was not necessary to deballast and relocate the suspended counterweight slabs. Time was saved with some crafty slewing and luffing. The girder was slewed into position for the next lift and subsequently radius was reduced to 13m by luffing the boom. The derrick counterweight could then be removed at the shorter radius. At this point, the crane – with only the 160t of superstructure counterweight – slewed into position and deposited the load. For the next lift, the derrick ballast pallet, loaded with 160t, was re-attached in the position of the next lift. In this way, the railway line was able to be re-opened on schedule.
Moving and installing a vessel
Irving Equipment was involved in the transportation and installation of a 199t de-ethaniser unit during the construction of Sable Offshore Energy’s gas processing plant at Goldboro, Nova Scotia. Back in January this year, the 36m-long de-ethaniser unit left the MM Industra yard in Dartmouth where it was manufactured and was transported to the Woodside Wharf on Scheuerle transporters, loaded onto a barge and sailed across the bay to Goldboro Wharf in Isaac’s Harbour. The unit was then offloaded, still on the transporters, and made the final part of its journey to the plant in Goldboro. Once at the plant, two Link-Belt HC-248H truck cranes, rated at 180t, worked in tandem with a Demag AC 180 tailing them to install the unit.
