American Crane & Equipment Completes Crane System Install at Boeing Facility

American Crane & Equipment Corp., Douglassville, Pa., a manufacturer of overhead electric cranes and hoists, has installed a custom under-hung crane system in the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner manufacturing facility in Charleston, S.C.

This project included the design, manufacture and installation of an 80-ton capacity custom under-hung crane system with multiple bridges. These bridges can be interlocked to allow the trolley (carrier) to be transferred from one bridge to another throughout the system. The 460’x1000’ building is designed without columns, which allows 100 percent accessibility from the crane system.

Crane system has 14 bridges and three trolleys (carriers), which have the ability to rotate +/-180°. Each trolley features two single girder cranes supporting two hoists each, for a total of four 10-ton hoists. Each hoist has its own trolley, allowing for movement of the hoist in all directions.

The controls system has infinite position possibilities providing precision control. This allows lifting objects of various shapes with difficult centers of gravity.

The operator chair is located in the carrier, complete with color touch screen, providing critical real-time information about the crane systems to the operators.

The runway contains 3.6 million pounds of steel, the system includes 1,216 bridge wheels, and the total length of flexible cables for the bridge and three carriers was 34,200 feet (more than 6 miles).

Complex installation was completed by assembling the bridge on the floor. A custom lifting device aided in lift actions and also served as a transport structure.

Read the full story in the October 2012 edition of Industrial Lift & Hoist.