Not all loads require hooks. In fact, most loads lack obvious lifting points, making hooks virtually useless. Specialized accessories are the answer. Julian Champkin claims that their variety is almost limitless.
You have a load to lift, you have a hoist to lift it, you may even have a hook on the end of the hoist rope, but sometimes the hook just won’t work with the load.
Drums, rolls, sheet metal and concrete curbs are just some of the common lifting loads that standard hooks cannot handle. The variety of specialized online hardware and designs, both custom and off-the-shelf, is almost limitless. ASME B30-20 is an American standard covering requirements for marking, load testing, maintenance and inspection of under hook attachments grouped into six different categories: structural and mechanical lifting devices, vacuum devices, non-contact lifting magnets, lifting magnets with remote control. , grabs and grabs for ha ndling scrap and materials. However, there are certainly many people who fall into the first category simply because they don’t fit into the other categories. Some lifters are dynamic, some are passive, and some cleverly use the weight of the load to increase its friction against the load; some are simple, some are very inventive, and sometimes the simplest and most inventive.
Consider a common and age-old problem: lifting stone or precast concrete. Masons have been using self-locking scissor-lift tongs since at least Roman times, and the same devices are still made and used today. For example, GGR offers several other similar accessories, including the Stone-Grip 1000. It has a 1.0 ton capacity, rubber coated grips (an improvement unknown to the Romans), and GGR recommends using additional suspension when climbing to heights, but ancient Roman engineers who built aqueducts centuries before the birth of Christ, had to recognize the device and be able to use it. Boulder and rock shears, also from GGR, can handle stone blocks weighing up to 200 kg (without shaping). The boulder lift is even simpler: it is described as “a flexible tool that can be used as a hook lift”, and is identical in design and principle to that used by the Romans.
For heavier masonry equipment, GGR recommends a series of electric vacuum lifters. Vacuum lifters were originally designed to lift glass sheets, which is still the main application, but suction cup technology has improved and the vacuum can now lift rough surfaces (rough stone as above), porous surfaces (filled cartons, production line products) and heavy loads (especially steel sheets), making them ubiquitous on the manufacturing floor. The GGR GSK1000 Vacuum Slate Lifter can lift up to 1000 kg of polished or porous stone and other porous materials such as drywall, drywall and structurally insulated panels (SIP). It is equipped with mats from 90 kg to 1000 kg, depending on the shape and size of the load.
Kilner Vacuumation claims to be the oldest vacuum lifting company in the UK and has been supplying standard or bespoke glass lifters, steel sheet lifters, concrete lifters and lifting wood, plastic, rolls, bags and more for over 50 years. This fall, the company introduced a new small, versatile, battery-operated vacuum lifter. This product has a load capacity of 600 kg and is recommended for loads such as sheets, slabs and rigid panels. It is powered by a 12V battery and can be used for horizontal or vertical lifting.
Camlok, although currently part of Columbus McKinnon, is a British company with a long history of manufacturing hanging hook accessories such as box plate clamps. The company’s history is rooted in the general industrial need to lift and move steel plates, from which the design of its products has evolved to the wide range of material handling equipment it currently offers.
For lifting slabs – the company’s original line of business – it has vertical slab clamps, horizontal slab clamps, lifting magnets, screw clamps and manual clamps. For lifting and transporting drums (which is especially required in the industry), it is equipped with a DC500 drum gripper. The product is attached to the top edge of the drum and the drum’s own weight locks it in place. The device holds the sealed barrels at an angle. To keep them level, the Camlok DCV500 vertical lifting clamp can hold open or sealed drums upright. For limited space, the company has a drum grapple with a low lifting height.
Morse Drum specializes in drums and is based in Syracuse, New York, USA, and since 1923, as the name suggests, specializes in manufacturing drum processing equipment. Products include hand roller carts, industrial roller manipulators, butt turning machines for content mixing, forklift attachments and heavy duty roller lifts for forklift mounting or hooked roller handling. A hoist under its hook allows controlled unloading from the drum: the hoist lifts the drum and attachment, and the tipping and unloading movement can be controlled manually or by hand chain or by hand. Pneumatic drive or AC motor. Anyone (like your author) who is trying to fill a car with fuel from a barrel without a hand pump or similar will want something similar – of course its main use is small production lines and workshops.
Concrete sewer and water pipes are another sometimes embarrassing load. When faced with the task of attaching a hoist to a hoist, you may want to stop for a cup of tea before you get to work. Caldwell has a product for you. His name is cup. Seriously, it’s a lift.
Caldwell has specially designed the Teacup pipe stand to make it easier to work with concrete pipes. You can more or less guess what shape it is. To use it, it is necessary to drill a hole of a suitable size in the pipe. You thread a wire rope with a metal cylindrical plug at one end through the hole. You reach into the tube while holding the cup—it has a handle on the side, as its name suggests, for just that purpose—and insert the cord and cork into the slot on the side of the cup. Using the gourd to pull the cable up, the cork wedges itself into the cup and tries to pull it out through the hole. The edge of the cup is larger than the hole. Result: The concrete pipe with the cup rose safely into the air.
The device is available in three sizes with a load capacity of up to 18 tons. The rope sling is available in six lengths. There are a number of other Caldwell accessories, none of which have such a fancy name, but they include suspension beams, wire mesh slings, wheel nets, reel hooks and more.
The Spanish company Elebia is known for its specialized self-adhesive hooks, especially for use in extreme environments such as steel mills, where manually attaching or releasing the hooks can be dangerous. One of its many products is the eTrack lifting grapple for lifting sections of railway track. It skillfully combines an ancient self-locking mechanism with high-tech control and safety technologies.
The device replaces or is hung under a crane or a hook on a hoist. It looks like an inverted “U” with a spring probe protruding down one of the bottom edges. When the probe is pulled onto the rail, it causes the clamp on the lifting cable to rotate so that the U-shaped hole is in the correct orientation for the rail to fit into it, i.e. along the entire length of the rail, not along it. Then the crane lowers the device onto the rails – the probe touches the rail flange and is pressed into the device, releasing the clamping mechanism. When the lift begins, the rope tension passes through the clamping mechanism, automatically locking it on the guide so that it can be safely lifted. Once the track is safely lowered to the correct position and the rope is not taut, the operator can command a release using the remote control and the clip will unlock and retract.
The battery-powered, color-coded status LED on the device body glows blue when the load is locked and can be lifted safely; red when the medium “Do not lift” warning is displayed; and green when the clamps are released and the weight is released. White – low battery warning. For an animated video of how the system works, see https://bit.ly/3UBQumf.
Based in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, Bushman specializes in both off-the-shelf and custom accessories. Think C-Hooks, Roll Clamps, Roll Elevators, Traverses, Hook Blocks, Bucket Hooks, Sheet Elevators, Sheet Elevators, Strapping Elevators, Pallet Elevators, Roll Equipment… and more. began to exhaust the list of products.
The company’s panel lifts handle single or multiple bundles of sheet metal or panels and can be powered by flywheels, sprockets, electric motors, or hydraulic cylinders. The company has a unique ring lifter that loads forged rings several meters in diameter into and out of vertical lathes and clamps them from the inside or outside of the rings. For lifting rolls, bobbins, paper rolls, etc. The C-hook is an economical tool, but for the heaviest rolls such as flat rolls, the company recommends electric roll grabs as an effective solution. from Bushman and are custom made to fit the width and diameter required by the customer. Options include coil protection features, motorized rotation, weighing systems, automation, and AC or DC motor control.
Bushman notes that an important factor when lifting heavy loads is the weight of the attachment: the heavier the attachment, the less the payload of the lift. As Bushman supplies equipment for factory and industrial applications ranging from a few kilograms to hundreds of tons, the weight of equipment at the top of the range becomes very important. The company claims that thanks to its proven design, its products have a low empty (empty) weight, which, of course, reduces the load on the lift.
Magnetic lifting is another ASME category that we mentioned at the beginning, or rather, two of them. ASME makes a distinction between “short-range lifting magnets” and remote-operated magnets. The first category includes permanent magnets that require some sort of load-relieving mechanism. Typically, when lifting light loads, the handle moves the magnet away from the metal lifting plate, creating an air gap. This reduces the magnetic field, which allows the load to fall off the riser. Electromagnets fall into the second category.
Electromagnets have long been used in steel mills for tasks such as loading scrap metal or lifting steel sheets. Of course, they need current flowing through them to pick up and hold the load, and this current must flow as long as the load is in the air. Therefore, they consume a lot of electricity. A recent development is the so-called electro-permanent magnetic lifter. In the design, hard iron (i.e. permanent magnets) and soft iron (i.e. non-permanent magnets) are arranged in a ring, and coils are wound on soft iron parts. The result is a combination of permanent magnets and electromagnets that are turned on by a short electrical pulse and remain on even after the electrical pulse has ceased.
The big advantage is that they consume much less power – the pulses last less than a second, after which the magnetic field remains on and active. A second short pulse in the other direction reverses the polarity of its electromagnetic part, creating a net zero magnetic field and releasing the load. This means that these magnets do not require power to hold the load in the air and in the event of a power outage, the load will remain attached to the magnet. Permanent magnet electric lifting magnets are available in battery and mains powered models. In the UK, Leeds Lifting Safety offers models from 1250 to 2400 kg. The Spanish company Airpes (now part of the Crosby Group) has a modular electro-permanent magnet system that allows you to increase or decrease the number of magnets according to the needs of each elevator. The system also allows the magnet to be pre-programmed to adapt the magnet to the type or shape of the object or material to be lifted – plate, pole, coil, round or flat object. The lifting beams supporting the magnets are custom made and can be telescopic (hydraulic or mechanical) or fixed beams.
Post time: Jun-29-2023