Hoist and Winch has developed a large customer base, building great relationships and delivering every time to fully meet the customer’s needs. With this particular cement industry customer, Hoist and Winch have completed a number of lifting system projects as well as handling the annual service contract for all of the powered lifting equipment located at their main UK manufacturing site. 

The brief - resolve a special lifting application requirement

For this particular application our customer approached us to resolve a special lifting application requirement they had encountered as a result of carrying out condition monitoring on a large gearbox that drives one of their cement mills which forms part of their manufacturing process.

The condition monitoring findings on this large gearbox weighing nearly 3 tonnes showed that the gearbox needed to be removed and refurbished over a short shutdown period and this was the first time this particular lift had been required to be carried out since the mill was first installed in the early 1990’s. 

The solution - a bespoke design single girder underhung crane

An initial site survey visit was arranged and whilst the customer initially suggested installing a new monorail beam and hoist arrangement, Hoist & Winch suggested utilising the existing steel floor support beams above the gearbox as the tracks for a Bespoke Design Single Girder Underhung Crane.

A further site survey then took place involving the customers Project Manager and their specialist Structural Engineering company who were involved in the original design of the building.

After this survey and detailed calculations it was agreed that these existing support beams could be used for this purpose and were suitable for the loads to be imposed.

The advantages for the use of the Bespoke Design Single Girder Underhung Crane over a conventional monorail beam/hoist arrangement included much greater flexibility in the positioning of the hoist unit load hook in order to achieve a balanced load and allow safe lifting to take place.

One design complication was that the existing proposed crane long travel beams were 50 mm different in height and therefore the crane needed to be designed to compensate for this.  Another difficulty was the very restricted working area for the dimensional survey and several very careful dimensional checks were required.

Crane hoists used in the application

The crane hoist unit we chose for this application was a Yalelift 360 MK III 3000kg SWL manual hoist with an integral hand geared trolley mounted to the single girder hand geared underhung crane. This hoist unit and the crane design offered a very close head-room dimension which was needed for the lifting operation.  

Once finalised the customer rapidly accepted our proposal, and general arrangement drawings were issued for joint approval prior to manufacture.  Crane manufacture then took place over a 3 week period. 

The critical nature of the project resulted in very closely monitored working practices calling for very stringent planning of all work activities and therefore all on site work had to be very carefully documented with Risk Assessments and Method Statements which were reviewed and agreed by the project manager & Health & Safety Dept before all work commenced.

Due to the very restricted working area and limited headroom the installation work was not straight forward and the crane was installed in a dismantled form comprising end carriages, crane girder, cross crane drive shaft and hoist unit.

Lifting equipment used during the installation work 

The Installation work involved the use of various pieces of lifting equipment including manual chain hoists, lever hoists, slings and shackles. Lever hoists are a very useful lifting aid as they can be used for lifting, dragging and lashing applications and are particularly helpful when aligning components during assembly work in restricted areas such as this crane installation in dismantled form.

After all the very careful planning we were able to carry out the installation with no complications and once completed we load tested the crane in accordance with LOLER 1998 regulations and the crane was certified accordingly with a LOLER Thorough Examination Report .

The final outcome was that the gearbox removal took place exactly as planned and we were advised on completion by the site engineers who carried out the work that the Hoist and Winch bespoke design single girder underhung crane design was the only solution that would of allowed the work to be completed Safely.

Contact Hoist and Winch Limited for your special lifting application projects today.