Overhead Gantry Cranes

[Knobhead]

It was funny afterwards I was expecting "lick 'em and stick 'em" You're fired!
From a newbie, "what I say goes" doesn't sit easy with the old guard.

We upgraded the plant and the company took all the engineers on the project out to lunch. My boss came out with the statement “it’s like the last supper. Twelve sat at the table.”
Six months down the line, I was the only one left of the twelve!

I still wonder if I should have taken the chance and gone to China to build a new plant with my boss in R&D.

Who knows, who cares? I gave up worrying years back.

 

[brookster]

O dear looks like the mechanical work would be part of the job spec! That's what mechanics are for, id only break a nail or get my overalls dirty

 

[joel89]

This is one of our cranes Tony. Kone this one is our biggest one

 

[Knobhead]

Kone must be one of the few I haven’t worked on.

 

[joel89]

yeah, this is the only one we have the rest are morris, demag and misia hoists. but this is the biggest at 15T

 

[Knobhead]

As I said Demag are overly complicated. Fine engineering but too finicky. If you elect to go on a Demag course, ask them for the setting tool for the limits. It’s an odd sized C spanner.
We had ten of them on one plant alone, a constant nightmare. It was a foundry, dust got in to everything and jammed it up!

Morris, now long gone, the small cranes were good except for the taper brakes jamming or wearing out. They made a high speed grab crane for us, Speed O Matic twin hoists, the first they had done. Didn’t we know it! Bloody thing!
Wellman are the heavy weights in the first picture I posted. Absolute barsteward things!
North British were just bloody minded.
Street Cranes, hit it with a hammer!
Allen West control, get you’re prayer mat out, you’ll need it!

Have fun with them and please don’t fall off! Or drop anything! Orange got a bit shirty with me. I dropped my phone in to a ladle of molten iron. “Can you get it back?”

 

[joel89]

funny you should mention this tony, the state of the panels is shocking ...i opened the door and it fell off (held with one broken hinge)straight to the floor luckily no-one was injuried... also they had me for the harness not being clipped on so im gonna get the book thrown at me tommorow stupid health and safety again.... so ive said right ill not use the cherry picker anymore.. we shall see what happens tommorow "health and safety awareness meeting" (in other words me getting a warning)...so there is a snake in the grass somewhere so maybe my crane days maybe over before they started lol

 

[Knobhead]

Don’t give up!

But you need you’re eyes everywhere. It becomes a 6[SUP]th[/SUP] sense.
I nearly got crushed on one of the big Wellman’s, the driver got North and South mixed up and I was stood in the way of the 170T cross travel. I’ve got long hair, the fitter grabbed it and yanked me out of the way. The same fitter I grabbed to stop him falling off a hoist drum.

Never work on your own! You look out for each other!

Regarding harnesses, they are a bloody menace! I’ve been tripped up more than once by them. Not good at 120 foot up.

 

[joel89]

Yeah i tripped over the harness many times tony .. They cause more safety issues then not having one on . No i wont give up i want to learn to move on and make more money hopefully !

 

[Bobster]

I remember servicing the slip ring drive on the hoist of one of our OH cranes.

not sure how it happened but the break failed on the cable drum, the 6ton bucket unspooled the cable off the drum and fell to the floor, I very nearly lost my hands in the slip ring chamber and the shovel driver in the gantry below was lucky he didn't get hit.

I had no ends of fun working on them when they became automated.

 

[joel89]

i got a verbal "written warning" so i raised all the safety issues regarding getting access onto our cranes... i played the well all the busbars need isolating when working, gantry walkways are needed on the cranes, the fact there is no safe load tested harness hook on points etc.. played em at there own game and said i wont be doing anything on them until this issue is resolved... shhhh management !!!

 

[Bobster]

It's all well and good playing them at their own game, so long as you do it with a bit of tact and not retaliation for doing something wrong.

My last company often went out of their way to pot the people like that.

 

[joel89]

I Wasnt been funny, at the end of the day the process which i used to transfer from the cherry picker to the crane had been done for the last 10 year and nothing had been said otherwise?.. but now it was wrong so what are you supposed to do.. so i used the things which need to be impleted and added in order to make it safe if thats the route they want to go down !!

 

[Knobhead]

As RoB said, be careful how you play the game. I have threatened to get the HSE involved with one new crane due to access, I was not the flavour of the month!

Access to cranes is always a problem. Climbing out of a cherry picker on to the crane is a NoNo. Yes I have done it, knew I shouldn’t do it, still I did it. Young and foolhardy and for some reason, still alive.

As I said before, with cranes it’s not just you’re safety it’s everyone else in the workplace.

I’ve had brakes slipping, but never had one fail as RoB did. Frequently they failed to pull off.


BTW RoB! Why wasn’t the grab open and on the floor before you put you’re pinkies in the brushgear? Naughty boy!
No doubt you’ll get you’re own back soon.


Joel, RoB and I have the same background and have great respect for each other. RoB’s still battling away, I’m retired through ill health. I miss the challenge of keeping a heavy plant going.

 

[silva.foxx]

... the process which i used to transfer from the cherry picker to the crane had been done for the last 10 year and nothing had been said otherwise?...

Just because that's the way it's always been done neither justifies it as safe or correct practice. Today we have to challenge old ways of working.

so i used the things which need to be impleted and added in order to make it safe if thats the route they want to go down !!

Had you informed your site H&S or made any attempt to action the said issues, or refused to carry out an unsafe task?