Cranes.

[Beeezer]

Just a few pics of these big beast at York putting a new foot bridge in.
There’s at least one crane lover on here…… nmp..

 

[Fazerruss]

Im definitely a crane lover

Thread 'New project for Xmas completion (hopefully!)'

Nov 8, 2015

I'm making my son his main gift from me.
Can you guess what it is?.......

• Fazerruss
• Replies: 236
• forum: Automotive, Bike & Trailer Build discussions

• 

 

[Beeezer]

Im definitely a crane lover

Thread 'New project for Xmas completion (hopefully!)'

Nov 8, 2015

I'm making my son his main gift from me.
Can you guess what it is?.......

• Fazerruss
• Replies: 236
• forum: Automotive, Bike & Trailer Build discussions

• 

Just noticed it’s a thread….. cracking job…

 

[BrokenBiker]

mammoet are a force to be reckoned with in this game...the undeniable daddy of the industry...worked with them twice to rig their LTM1750 and an LTM1500, the operator of which is my managers partner.

the crawlers are next level...guy i loosley know that works for them posts videos of his LR11350 tracking with 250 ton hanging from the hook, and i think his heaviest lift to date is in the region of 540 ton in one hit.

i think crawlers may be my next jump if i ever decide to leave sparrows

 

[Tinbasherdan]

Old fella was a mobile driver, drove all sorts doing stuff on nuclear sites, tandem lift and turns etc.

He went to work for the docks board as a crane driver/pilot boat skipper. I went down one day for a brew and couldn’t find him, he was pootling round the dock in control of one of smits taklift floating cranes, they’d been chatting at lunch and he’d been voted on board for a play. Can’t take him anywhere

 

[BrokenBiker]

Old fella was a mobile driver, drove all sorts doing stuff on nuclear sites, tandem lift and turns etc.

He went to work for the docks board as a crane driver/pilot boat skipper. I went down one day for a brew and couldn’t find him, he was pootling round the dock in control of one of smits taklift floating cranes, they’d been chatting at lunch and he’d been voted on board for a play. Can’t take him anywhere

thats the thing about crane drivers, we never say no to a chance to paly with something new...i was out on a site a few months ago with my 60 ton mobile doing steel erection, and there was a 300 ton crawler there doing culvert sections...got chatting to the driver as i was waiting on a wagon that was massively delayed and he turned to me and said 'whats your heaviest lift?' i told him 74 ton with a 350 mobile...he looks around, calls his supervisor over, intorduces me and says 'this lad is going to take over for about half hour, i need to go up the shop and grab some food'..and just like that im operating a 300 ton crawler lifting 35 ton precast culvert sections into a small river. its also how i got my heaviest lift on the 350 and how i got to operate the 500 at my last job

 

[Tinbasherdan]

thats the thing about crane drivers, we never say no to a chance to paly with something new...i was out on a site a few months ago with my 60 ton mobile doing steel erection, and there was a 300 ton crawler there doing culvert sections...got chatting to the driver as i was waiting on a wagon that was massively delayed and he turned to me and said 'whats your heaviest lift?' i told him 74 ton with a 350 mobile...he looks around, calls his supervisor over, intorduces me and says 'this lad is going to take over for about half hour, i need to go up the shop and grab some food'..and just like that im operating a 300 ton crawler lifting 35 ton precast culvert sections into a small river. its also how i got my heaviest lift on the 350 and how i got to operate the 500 at my last job

He drove all sorts, he did a lot of work with ainscoughs with their 1000t plus mobiles for heavy confined space lifts. Somewhere out there there’s pictures of him loading stuff on board the vanguard boats amongst others

He drove the SPMTs as well, transporting loads up to 600t on the road from shed to shed in the shipyard

 

[BrokenBiker]

He drove all sorts, he did a lot of work with ainscoughs with their 1000t plus mobiles for heavy confined space lifts. Somewhere out there there’s pictures of him loading stuff on board the vanguard boats amongst others

He drove the SPMTs as well, transporting loads up to 600t on the road from shed to shed in the shipyard

if ainscough was the same now as it was then, i would have gone there instead of sparrows, but now its just money over all else as with most places.

 

[Tinbasherdan]

if ainscough was the same now as it was then, i would have gone there instead of sparrows, but now its just money over all else as with most places.

I think last time he worked with them was probably knocking on for 15 years ago or so. He never worked for them but was sent by the yard to train on their cranes so they could tandem lift stuff (yard only had a 30t and a 50t tadano mobile at the time, everything else was hired in)

 

[BrokenBiker]

I think last time he worked with them was probably knocking on for 15 years ago or so. He never worked for them but was sent by the yard to train on their cranes so they could tandem lift stuff (yard only had a 30t and a 50t tadano mobile at the time, everything else was hired in)

most of the people i work with now all left ainscough around 15 years ago, the majority took voluntary redundancy but they all left for the same reasons, being run ragged for littel extra pay or recognition...

i will admit, sparrows, whilst being a very good place to work, is more like a retirement village for crane operators...the work is repetetive and progress onto larger cranes is virtually non existent even if you have provable experience on them unless your dad is already on a larger crane...or you have a good set of kneepads and no gag reflex, but i suppose that is how most industries operate now...reward the incompetent until you find something they can do while the people that are good at their jobs can stay where they are and keep being good at it.

 

[Munkul]

Crane love here
I've worked with a few crane drivers over the years, it's no accident how the drivers of the biggest best cranes in a company also happen to be the smoothest operators and the most mechanically sympathetic.

Any big hiab drivers here? 100tm plus? I'm a huge fan of big knuckle booms. Mobile cranes will always rule for outright lifting, but remote controlled knuckle booms are just so flexible in tight spaces!

We work with Lawsons of Cockermouth usually, they have good drivers, good kit, and their machines are always clean and look great.

I've operated our 45tm fassi a few times at work, good bit of kit. Its mounted on a 200hp morooka tracked dumper base, it can go anywhere...very slow though.

 

[Munkul]

i will admit, sparrows, whilst being a very good place to work, is more like a retirement village for crane operators...the work is repetetive and progress onto larger cranes is virtually non existent even if you have provable experience on them unless your dad is already on a larger crane...or you have a good set of kneepads and no gag reflex, but i suppose that is how most industries operate now...reward the incompetent until you find something they can do while the people that are good at their jobs can stay where they are and keep being good at it.

That's a shame to hear.
Problem is, if you're a career crane operator, once you get on a big machine, that's it, you've peaked. Progression is measured in decades.

 

[BrokenBiker]

it's no accident how the drivers of the biggest best cranes in a company also happen to be the smoothest operators and the most mechanically sympathetic.

not always true...if you ever have to work with King Lifting i would suggest standing back until you can sus out whether they are going to decent or not...they have a 500 ton operator that cannot deal with boom deflection to save his life and doesnt care either...he cant go to jobs where precision is needed on the initial lift as he will hit something without fail...i also know of a 200 ton operator with them that got a brand new 200 tonner and the first job on it was putting up a tower crane...he had to call the boss that day and explain how he had managed to slew his crane into the tower crane he was erecting...

it does baffle me how some of these people are still so crap when modern cranes are so smooth and easy to operate its actually quite difficult to be bad on them

 

[Munkul]

Haha fair enough! Just my experience, I've only worked with 3 different outfits overall and they're all local, not huge companies.

 

[BrokenBiker]

That's a shame to hear.
Problem is, if you're a career crane operator, once you get on a big machine, that's it, you've peaked. Progression is measured in decades.

once you get toa 750 mobile you are just considered to be 'average' on crawlers...and once you get to the peak of the crawlers you then have things like mammoet's focus 30 modular self erect...or big carl from sarens...

not just that, but the bigger cranes do a much wider variety of work. one day you can be lifting 300 ton, the next day you might only have 4 ton to lift, but its 80 meters away. each have their own challenges, but on a 60 you are pretty limited to things like timber framing, concrete slabs, containers or steel erection...not a lot else they do regularly

 

[BrokenBiker]

Haha fair enough! Just my experience, I've only worked with 3 different outfits overall and they're all local, not huge companies.

kings are a bit of a laughing stock down this end...baldwins are know as the cowboys cowboy, but everyone jokes that kings would do anything to take that crown from them...including kings operators...the amoutn of jobs we go to that was initially done by kings but not done properly is scary even after ive worked for them and know what they are like, they still manage to surprise me

 

[BrokenBiker]

the biggest issue we seem to be facing at the moment is finding people that can read, understand and use the information given to them...some cranes can be quite hectic on the screen, mine is one of them...

everything on there is important, but only 3 sections are critical...but a lot of people struggle to read it all at a quick glance and then interpret it qucikly enough to make a decision halfway through a movement.

the tadanos we have translate a fair bit of it into 1 number that simply tells you with whatever weight you have lifted, this is how far you can go with it until you need to start really thinking about it, but the liebherrs dont do any of that, you have to read it and work it out as you are going otherwise it will get to the 100% limit and just stop you dead, which is never ideal

 

[LiftedDisco]

I’ve only ever been client-side when thinking about cranes and lifts… I’m the fool that rings and says, “can you take a look at this…?”

Some notable lifts included a fully ballasted 500-tonne located inside an operational prison (slight frisson of excitement when the Governor asked if we were de-rigging and taking it out each evening), lifting 22 tonnes at a 54m radius.

I suppose the other ‘big’ lift was a six crane tandem lift - 5 x 350 tonne, plus 1 x 500 tonne lifting a single roof canopy of 60m x 75m weighing 220 tones. That was fun, particularly as the HSE said they’d never seen this done before and ‘would it be OK if they came to watch’. They then extended the invitation to all the Main Contractor teams on the site (erm… just a small site… London 2012 set-up) so we had an audience of 50 or so hi-viz clad observers…

Thing was, the overall building was 60m x 240m so we repeated the lift on the following two days - three consecutive tandem lifts (and then the same when we dismantled after the Olympics).

Or there was the time we lifted a 60 tonne crane into the moat of the Tower of London with 180 tonne crane located on Tower Hill - I could go on…!

 

[Tinbasherdan]

I always found it amusing that my old boy can’t switch a laptop on but can make the computer in a 1200t liebherr dance

 

[Wedg1e]

I was working down at HMNB Portsmouth a few years ago, they were setting up a mobile crane to lift a mobile crane off the deck of one of the carriers.
As we watched I commented that surely the crane they were using wasn't big enough to lift that other one. Then we cracked on with our job.
On the news that evening was a report that a dockside mobile crane had toppled over and was leaning against the carrier...
They couldn't exactly keep it quiet, you could see it from Gosport