Injection Mold Company Commissions New 5 Ton, Custom-Designed Bridge Crane

UPLOADED: 8/5/2017

Mass Crane and a local, Rhode-Island based injection mold company are pleased to announce the successful commissioning of a new, custom-designed 5 Ton bridge crane system this past May. Working in partial clean-room conditions, over the course of 3 weeks, Mass Crane's experienced team of millwrights and service technicians installed the new system during 1st shift, allowing their customer to continue to use their machines during second shift for the duration of the installation. From Mass Crane's initial site visit in the summer of 2016, Mass Crane's team of salesmen and engineers worked hand-in-hand with their customer to identify, approach, and ultimately resolve a wide variety of challenges to implement the new material handling solution.


CHALLANGES

  • The small room is filled with large, injection mold machines which occupy the majority of the floor space, leaving little room for crane structure. The top of the machines was only 27" below the drop ceiling, and there was an existing monorail built into the ceiling that extended 8" below.

  • The monorail allowed the customer to remove molds and drop them on carts in aisles along the far walls of the room. End approach with a standard crane and runways built within the room would not allow the customer to reach the aisle with the crane hook.

  • The new interior runway beams, which would span over the injection mold machines, would present a major logistical installation problem.


SOLUTIONS

  • Mass Crane's design team visited the site several times to identify the machine locations, the room geometry, the aisle locations, as well as the customer's work flow, process, and material handling needs. They then drafted a conceptual crane plan which, upon returning to the site and reviewing with the customer, was revised several times before a working plan materialized.

  • The clean room wall on one end of the room was removed, allowing Mass Crane to build their end frame within the end wall, maximizing runway length. Custom "low profile" end stops were designed as well as an offset bridge beam, minimizing the end approach and allowing the customer to reach the aisle with the hook.

  • The existing monorail and hoist was used to move runway beams into position, where they would be re-rigged with two custom narrow aisle fork trucks and set on their columns.

  • Column centers along the interior of the room were selected so runway beam center of gravity was in or adjacent to an aisle, facilitating the installation.

  • Since removing the entire ceiling or torch cutting the existing monorail were both impractical, Mass Crane used a sawsall and removed over 80' of monorail beam in pieces, giving the new bridge enough clear height to travel over the machines and underneath the lowest obstruction.



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