Liebherr has delivered more than ten of the new 800t crawler cranes in Europe, North America and Asia. All of which featured the standard 650t S head section used for heavy hoisting and wind turbine erection jobs.

“The standard head is absolutely adequate for the vast majority of jobs. However, the
LR 1800-1.0 is designed to produce its maximum lifting capacity in real-world conditions as it can hoist 800t with a 9m radius on a 57m boom. That gives it plenty of scope for real applications. That is why we built the 800t head, and now we have tested it as well,” said Jens Ko¨nneker, product manager crawler cranes at Liebherr.

For testing procedures the test loads are around 25% above the lifting capacity to ensure a high level of safety when the crane is deployed. The new 800t head and the new hook block  passed the test with a 1,000t test load.

Ko¨nneker said: “The new hook block can be used on both the LR 1800-1.0 and the LR 11000. That is very important for customers who have both crane models. It enables them to use this block for both cranes flexibly and economically. As a result of the higher rope pull on the LR 11000, it can hoist up to 1,000t.”

For the test hoist, the LR 1800-1.0 was set up with 70t of central ballast, 170t of slewing platform ballast and 228t of derrick ballast as well as a 33m derrick boom. A ballast trailer was used for the derrick ballast. However, the test could also have been carried out with suspended ballast.