Swiss distributor of stainless steel products uses ABUS EOT cranes

Flame red and stainless steel

16 ABUS EOT cranes glow fiery red in the facilities of Swiss company HANS KOHLER AG (www.kohler.ch), as fiery red as the red-hot stainless steel in a foundry. The HANS KOHLER AG is able to look back on a long company tradition: Kohler has been dealing in stainless steel for one hundred years and counts among the leading stainless steel distributors in Switzerland today. This company, owner managed in its third generation, has several distribution sites in Switzerland. In 2019 a new storage facility was taken into operation in Dietikon near Zurich. This automated high bay warehouse for long goods with storage capacity of over 4.000 cassette drawers centralises all of the company’s previous storage facilities in one location and ensures rapid delivery readiness for a very extensive product range.

New crane projects based on quality and good experiences in the past

HANS KOHLER AG had already installed three EOT cranes in 2012. The company Brun Marti Dytan AG (www.brunmartidytan.ch), the ABUS partner for Switzerland and Liechtenstein, assisted Kohler with consultation, sale, assembly and commissioning of these cranes. Good experience with the material handling solution and the products offered by Brun Marti Dytan made HANS KOHLER AG choose ABUS cranes for their new project as well. A total of 16 crane systems are now in operation in different areas in order to ensure the stainless steel is going full cycle—right from pipe coils coming in on lorries until the finished products such as sawn and machined long goods, pipes and bar stock are ready to be shipped out again. Different single girder EOT cranes with SWLs between 1 and 6.3 tonnes and spans between 12,155 and 22,590 mm are used depending on location and use in the plant that is 120 metres long. The hook paths of these cranes have been designed to reach up to 6,000 mm.

The cranes installed in 2012 were single girder underslung EOT cranes. This particular design sees the crane tracks on which the cranes are running directly installed on the ceiling of the building rather than on supports. The design allows best use to be made of available building width thanks to small trolley approach dimensions and individual adaptations of crane projections. The highest hook position can be improved also. Thus, even complex building and construction conditions may be utilised optimally using standard cranes.

Customised solutions for individual transport tasks

In 2018 Brun Marti Dytan installed and commissioned a further 13 cranes for diverse transport tasks ranging from professional and safe loading and unloading of lorries through transferring the various steel products within the plant to transporting them to the individual processing stations. Nine of these cranes are single girder cranes with load capacities of 6.3 tonnes. Seven of these cranes are single girder cranes of the ELV type with rolled section girders due to their smaller spans of 12.1 and 16.3 metres respectively. Two further cranes come in the ELK design with spans of 22.5 metres and have welded box girders for their main girders. All cranes are fitted with wire rope hoists as the goods they are transporting consist of long and heavy steel products. The hoists of the single girder cranes also feature electronic synchronisation control systems GLS. The GLS ensure that lifting speeds and thus relative hook positions are always matched to each other during tandem travelling of both hoists. Mutual leading or lagging even with hooks under different loads is kept within narrow limits thanks to the GLS. This is an important safety aspect when transporting long goods. The cranes are operated via radio remote control making it even safer for the crane operators to control the cranes. The crane operator may choose from where to observe the movement of the crane and the behaviour of the load and can control the crane accordingly. He can read the weight of the load on the crane at any time as it is displayed on an LED matrix display mounted on the crane. The trained crane operators have thus every required handling safely under control whether it be lifting or lowering or area-wide or linear transport.

Four single girder wall travelling cranes of the EWL type running on the lower material flow level ensure that the loads reach the individual processing stations along the walls of the building while the nine single girder EOT cranes on the upper level transport the loads over the entire area of the plant. The wall travelling cranes travel on a second crane track installed below the EOT cranes. The EWL cranes have spans of 9.5 metres and are also equipped with two hoists each: they make ideal workstation cranes serving several stations. The single girder wall travelling cranes are also operated via radio remote control.

The customer can rely on professional support from Brun Marti Dytan in terms of maintenance, inspection and repair thanks to their nationwide service and customer support network once the cranes have been installed and commissioned.