| High-profile cranes |
Demag single-girder overhead travelling cranes handling alumin-ium profiles
Three single-girder overhead travelling cranes supplied by Demag Cranes & Components are used for handling aluminium profile sections, which are assembled into bundles for specific customers, at Aluminium Laufen AG. The tasks performed by the cranes also include intermediate storage and loading of trucks. Since the cranes are equipped with two crabs, they are highly flexible with regard to the profile lengths to be handled.
Established in 1927, Aluminium Laufen AG, located in Liesberg (Switzerland), is now a leading company in the Swiss metal industry. Its core activities are the manufacture of castings and extruded aluminium profile sections ready for installation. 60 % of its sales are accounted for by export. Customers are primarily from the construction and automotive industries as well as the window and building facade construction sector. Special profile sections, which are manufactured in small quantities, are a particular strength of Aluminium Laufen.
Aluminium Laufen had a logistics bay built measuring 94 m long and 15 m wide for handling aluminium profile sections. In this building, the aluminium profile sections, which are bundled into packages, are staged in a buffer store ready for collection. The handling of the profile section bundles and loading of the trucks, which can enter the building through five doors, are performed by single-girder overhead travelling cranes supplied by Demag Cranes & Components. The cranes are each fitted with two DR-Pro rope hoists. Each of the travelling hoists has a load capacity of 1.6 t. The higher hoist and travel speeds, as well as the infinitely variable cross-travel speeds of the hoists, which facilitate fast, gentle, safe and precise positioning with virtually no sway, result in considerable handling rates. The cranes have a span of some 16 m.
Above all, the requirements specified by Aluminium Laufen for the cranes operating in doubleshift operation included smooth handling. In view of the frequent load changing operations, this requirement becomes even more important.
A further requirement by the company is to achieve greater flexibility with regard to the length of the profile sections to be handled. In the past, Aluminium Laufen used cranes whose load handling attachments were adjusted to fixed profile section lengths of 6 m. By contrast, the new Demag cranes make it possible to vary the distances when the load is picked up by means of the two travelling hoists. In this way, the company is able to satisfy all customer wishes within a wide range of profile section lengths. The profile sections, which are manufactured on three press lines, are automatically packed and transported to the logistics bay on a conveyor system. Here, the cranes lift the profile sections from the conveyor and deposit them at a storage place. When required, the cranes retrieve the aluminium profile sections that are shaped and cut to length according to the customer order and load them onto trucks.
The company ensures that the load capacity of the trucks is utilised as well as possible and that delivery routes are compiled as efficiently as possible.Slings, which are suspended from the single hooks of the rope hoists, are used as additional attachment for handling the profile sections. The lifting motions of both travelling hoists on each crane are synchronise. The cranes and travelling hoists are controlled via the DRC10 radio remote control system. A cable would be a considerable obstacle, if the operator had to climb down from a truck while controlling a crane, for example. The operator no longer needs to guide the load, either. Before the cranes were able to commence their actual tasks, the profile section manufacturer used them for a special application. The cranes assisted with the concrete work for the floor of the building after they had been installed by means of a mobile crane before the roof was closed.
Aluminium Laufen has already been working with the Swiss subsidiary of Demag Cranes & Components for a long time. Besides the delivery of cranes and further products, such as the KBK crane construction kit, Demag is active in the maintenance and service fields in Liesberg.
For this reason, the company was also the first contact with regard to the award of the current order. The management of Aluminium Laufen also emphasise the benefit that the Demag sales organisation in Switzerland knows the situation in their plant well and is therefore able to find the optimum solution quickly and reliably in each case. An example of this is the proposal to utilise cranes with two travelling hoists in order to be able to handle different profile lengths.
The new shipping bay was designed in such a way that reserve capacities are available. Besides the fact that the already existing cranes could work around the clock, it is also possible to place two further cranes on the crane runway and therefore increase the handling capacity even further.
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Contact:
Corporate Communications
Demag Cranes & Components
Mr Christoph Kreutzenbeck
Tel. +49 (0) 2335 / 92-7333
