Steel meets concrete

The company EBAWE in Eilenburg near Leipzig develops, manufactures and installs production plants for the industrial manufacture of a wide variety of concrete elements. Steel pallets of all types and sizes are moved using a semi-automatic pallet crane which stacks and loads the manufactured pallets for the concrete industry – the crane technology for this comes from STAHL CraneSystems.

Due to an expansion in production at the premises of EBAWE Eilenburg and the resultant higher handling requirement, stacking and loading of the pallets must now proceed faster than before. EBAWE therefore contracted Gokran GmbH Eilenburg to deliver a high-performance, semi-automatic pallet crane. Intelligent crane technology from STAHL CraneSystems ensures that the double girder overhead travelling crane picks up the pallets from the production area in longitudinal direction to the hall, turns them by 90° with the help of an automatic positioning feature and then stacks them one on top of the other in the storage areas. The pallet is picked up with a target-controlled gripper, which adjusts its gripper arms semi-automatically in such a way that the steel pallet is gripped securely and thus hangs positively from the load attachment device.

All functions of the crane and the load attachment device are controlled by frequency inverters. Data is exchanged via Profinet and organised by a Siemens S7-1200 PLC installed on the crane bridge. The complete crane including load attachment device is controlled by a radio remote control, including visualisation of the individual loads, error indication as well as operating information on the display.

The double girder overhead travelling crane is equipped with two crabs and SH 50 frequency-controlled wire rope hoists from STAHL CraneSystems with a total S.W.L. of 16,000&nsbp;kg and a track gauge of almost 30 m. In addition to hoists, SR wheel blocks with radio-controlled travel drives, LT coupled endcarriages and driving gear for the crane bridge, the complete control technology (including commissioning) also came from STAHL CraneSystems. The hoists’ frequency inverters are synchronised continuously via integrated synchro cards so that the load hook position of the four electric hoists does not change when tandem operation is selected.

When the crane is started and the lifting beam is attached, the load hooks are aligned semi-automatically according to the criterion of even loading, and all drives of the pallet lifting beam are referenced. This ensures that, with uniform load distribution to the hoists, the lifting beam is in balance and that the functions of the lifting beam, with their target control of the slewing gear, the grippers and longitudinal adjustment, are ready for use.

STAHL CraneSystems has been working closely with Gokran GmbH since its foundation in 2011. Crane kits, wire rope hoists and crane components for various projects are supplied regularly to the crane manufacturer. EBAWE Eilenburg is a long-standing customer of Gokran Eilenburg. Ronald Gollasch, managing director of Gokran GmbH, emphasises: “Thanks to the professional and close collaboration, the project was realised in a very short time, and the new pallet crane facilitates and accelerates the workflows of our customer immensely.”