Powlift Motorised Coil Lifter with Slew

EURAMAX in Holland have recently purchased two Powlift telescopic coil grabs with coil damage protection features.  These are as listed below.

• Soft front vertical faces lined with plastic to exert a maximum side wall pressure of 2 kg.  This is removed from the operator by an electronic system to prevent excessive side wall damage.
• The heel and toe of the lifting foot are fitted with plastic rollers to minimise contact pressure from a sliding to rolling pressure.
• The underside of the main body of the grab is fitted with protective plates to prevent OD damage.
• The grab is fitted with a series of lights attached to the grab to assist the operator in the safe handling of the grab and ensure maximum safety is achieved throughout the lifting operations.
• The lifting foot of the grab is fitted with an electronic system that is depressed when the grab is lifted and wired into the main hoists of the crane to ensure that the crane cannot be raised in the event of lifting foot being fitted incorrectly.
• A photo cell light beam indicates that the presence of the side wall when lowering.  Thus preventing the operator from closing the grab onto the side wall inadvertently.
• The first Powlift grab shown on the image is one of two supplied.  The grab illustrated was fitted with a four fall stabilized suspension for maximum stability, thus to further prevent possibility of damage to coils.
• The second Powlift grab supplied was fitted with a normal single suspension point and included all the features mentioned above.

The purpose of this feature is to eliminate expensive damage to the finished coil caused by contact with grabs.

Powlift Automatic Tong for Handling Rows of Billets

TATA STEEL through one of their Singapore subsidiaries have recently placed an order for a below the hook lifter.

Generally as shown on the above image.

The Powlift mill duty automatic billet tong handles hot and cold concast billets.

The tong is designed to handle a pack of side by side billets across the ends.  The tong has a working load limit of 10 tonnes.

The tong is suspended from an overhead 15 tonne crane and operates without the necessity of electric or hydraulics.

Powlift also manufacture a range of hydraulic ingot billet handlers to handle concast slabs from the concasting machine to the cooling yard.  See website for enquiries.

The grab has the facility to rotate the pallet and pack to the correct orientation to allow a fork lift truck to remove the pallets from the lorry.  The grab is radio controlled and fully mechanised and the body of the grab is designed to a minimum dimension to allow the grab to pass between a stack of coils eye to the sky without interfering with adjacent packs.

Motorised Internal Coil Lifter

The grab was one of two recently produced in 2011 for a UK aluminium company, part of the ELVAL group.  The grab has a built in slewing head to provide a very low operating headroom.  The opening and closing of the grab is electromechanical whilst the final grip is purely mechanical.

Powlift designed and fitted the electrical control systems into the crane to include safety features to prevent unintentional, or accidental release of the grip.

The grab is electrically interlocked to prevent the operator inadvertently opening the grab and also included is a load limiting system to prevent the grab being opened when a load is applied.  A system of lights helps the operator confirm that the system is correctly operated.

A safety design feature of mechanical wedgelocks is included to prevent unintentional releasing of the load should the ingot be bumped on the floor.

Ingot laydown grab with slewing head

The opening and the closing of the grab is electromechanical.  The final grip of the grab is purely mechanical.  The unit can have either single or double suspension.  This grab was manufactured for the ALCAN GROUP in the UK.

Horizontal Ingot Rotate Grab

At the bottom of each lifting leg a pair of sliding feet.  Each pair of feet are manually adjustable from 1 metre to 1.5 metres, giving more stability on the longer packs.  The lifter has a single suspension point which is a withdrawable lifting bobbin pin.  This ensures the lowest headroom possible when using the sheet lifter.

The centres of the lifting chains are fixed at 3.5 metres longitudinally and in the alternative attitude they are manually adjustable from 2.5 metres down to 1 metre centres.

The success of the first beam led to the purchase of a second beam.

Powlift were approached by a Nigerian company to provide a grab to safely and efficiently handle rows of aluminium billets in their casting shop. The grab that Powlift supplied was a purely mechanical type that is suspended from an overhead crane and relies on the hoisting motion of the crane for its operation. There were therefore, no electrics on board.

The billets handled vary in size from 6” / 9” diameter and 99” / 105” long.

The grab in its held open position is lowered over a line of billets and lowered until it rests on the top of the billets. Further lowering of the crane disengages the mechanism that holds the grab in the open position, and when the crane is raised the lifter closes and the angle feet move under the line of billets. The line of billets can then be safely lifted and transported to the required destination.

The grab will handle a maximum row of 17 billets weighing 6 tonnes.

Powlift Chock & Roll Lifting Beam

Powlift has supplied many pieces of equipment for use in rolling mills over a period of many years.  The lifting beam shown is for lifting work rolls and chocks weighing up to 110 tonnes.

At each end of the beam are 2 sets of alloy chains each terminating in a customised dolly that fits into a location hole in the side of the chocks giving a safe 4 point lift.

The longitudinal centres of the chains is adjustable for handling a range of rolls and chocks.

This type of beam has also been supplied to handle top and bottom work rolls and chocks in tandem, i.e. one on top of the other, and this equipment has been utilised for handling back up rolls also.

Sheet Pack Up Ender with Slew.

The quality of the sheets used in the automotive and domestic appliance industries is of major importance.  Therefore the sheets have to be inspected on both sides which necessitates the packs of sheets being turned over.

At first glance the cheapest method of turning over packs would be by using soft slings, but over a period of time this has proved not to be the case.  This method is labour intensive, time consuming, and potentially dangerous.  Because the slings fit around the sharp edges of the pack damage to the sheets may occur and damage to the slings will without doubt frequently occur presenting a potential hazard to the operators.

The photograph shows a Powlift Pack Turnover Unit that was supplied to the automotive industries.  Packs are loaded into the mouth of the unit by means of a forklift truck.  The truck withdraws and the base of the mouth upon which the pack sits is raised up by a hydraulic scissor table until the pack is gripped in the mouth of the machine.

The hydraulic pressure is set so that the pack does not slip during turnover, and when that pressure is detected by a pressure switch, the cylindrical drum of the unit can be rotated, thus turning over the packs.

The unit shown also has a slew facility incorporated into the base so that when the packs have been turned over, the unit can be rotated through 180 degrees, and the packs can be unloaded from the same location that they were originally loaded, when the hydraulic table has been lowered.

The turnover unit in the image is located in a safety compound which is fitted with sensors to prevent the unit operating whilst the forklift truck is still in the compound.

The system can be automated so that once the truck leaves the compound, an automatic cycle begins that clamps the pack, turns it over, and rotates it ready for unloading.

This method of pack turnover is by far the safest means of doing so and has proved within 6 months of purchase to be the most cost effective method also.