ABUS EOT crane assisting with installation and building

Normally cranes are installed in completed plants. It is therefore quite an unusual application to have an EOT crane installed during the construction phase of a building. This happened at Jokey Plastik in Gummersbach, a company specialising in packaging: they installed the ABUS EOT crane to be used as building crane at first in order to add another storey to the existing production plant.

Jokey Plastik (www.jokey.com) produces plastic containers and plastic packaging for diverse industries and applications in 14 production plants worldwide. Other business areas are the production of technical precision parts and of furniture for bathrooms and spa elements. At their plant in Gummersbach Jockey produce plastic packaging for the building materials industry among other products. The existing print area on site was to be changed into an injection moulding area so that production capacities could be boosted. The factory planers proposed to add another storey with a height of about five metres to the building. The particular challenge was to carry out these structural changes preferably without interrupting the ongoing operation. Therefore the roof of the building was opened up in part to introduce longer and stronger supporting pillars. The next step was to install the crane track and the roof trusses: the construction crew was able to carry out the installation comfortably by making use of the older and lower roof. Yet not only was the height of the production plant to be increased but the newly installed crane was also to have a higher load capacity. The packaging manufacturer wanted to boost the internal transport facilities by a considerable margin. Previously used cranes came with safe working loads of only 3.2 tonnes; now the new cranes will be able to move loads of up to 10 tonnes. The new cranes are two single girder cranes of the ELK type with spans of 23 metres. The ABUS installation crew also profited from the still existing lower roof of the building and could install the cranes onto the crane tracks practically at eye level.

However, before the EOT cranes could be used for the machinery in the bay they had their big moment as “building assistants”. Once the new roof had been installed from the old rooftop the trapezoidal sheets had to be removed. The roof was opened bit by bit, the material was first stored and then lowered in stacks by the EOT crane and then transported off site. The cranes are operated via the radio remote controls “ABURemote” which enable overhead control and allow the crane user to observe the working zone of the crane from a safe position and to control the crane accordingly.

The complete modification of the building was finished with minimum interruption to the ongoing operation. Today the ABUS EOT cranes act as indispensable assistants in the production planning, because the changing of the tools in the injection moulding area is carried out by this crane in the entire working area.