Heavy Duty Cranes for Hire: How Heavy Duty Cranes Lift Massive and Heavy Loads

14 May 2018

To find out how heavy-duty cranes lift impossibly heavy loads, you need to shift your focus a little. That strong rigging, the steel-reinforced cables and cast-iron hook, they’ve absorbed your attention for long enough. Anyway, the crane rental company has just carried out a maintenance test on those lift-critical parts, so your attention can be freed for the moment. Take this chance to grasp the whole picture.

Whole Picture Design

The impossibly compact crane you’re about to hire is that size and shape because it’s built to be mobile. Somehow, though, the design engineers have imbued the large frame with mighty lifting aptitude, but how do you take advantage of the extra power? Well, a robust hydraulic system is already translating small operator signals into amplified lift movements, but there’s more to discover.

Precisely Designed Crane Geometries

Before the boom and lift assemblies unfold, what do you think the designers added to the design during the crane’s manufacturing phase? Well, they worked until their minds were exhausted, all so that these unfolding parts could lift thousands of kilos at a time. They also added counterweights and outriggers. The goal, as the post title says, is to lift heavy loads, but it’s also to assure frame stability all throughout that lift cycle.

An Anchored Stability Factor

You need to go back to the drawing board to see how the design engineers overcame the mobile equipment’s lifting challenges. Look closely, they installed a supplementary braking system. Outriggers are backing up the brakes and stabilizing the vehicle chassis. They’re hooked into a high-capacity hydraulic system. Then, deep inside the gear, there are cylinders and actuators at work. They strain to take the load and to support that weight as the heavy-duty crane rotates its turntable.

Extending the Arms and Counterchecks

The chassis is anchored, the hydraulic equipment is doing its job, and now it’s time to unfold the steel arm. The boom extends, as controlled by the operator and his loading chart, and the counterweight is prepped. Like a balancing scale and fulcrum, the boom moves into place. Multiple lines of rigging take up the slack. The hook is coupled. The heavy lift cycle is smoothly initiated, again and again, until the payloads are placed.

Crane technology represents an example of some of the most fundamental laws of physics. The scale and fulcrum mechanism facilitates the manipulation of a medium-sized load. But that’s not enough, not for the heaviest packages on the largest construction sites. Digging deep, heavy-duty cranes pull out their counterweights, telescoping booms, jibs and rigging strategies, then the unfolded assemblies flex stainless steel muscles and fluid sinews. The load rises easily, and they practically fly into place.