July 31 - German crane manufacturer Liebherr has set a new world record by assembling the world's tallest crawler crane at its manufacturing plant in Ehingen.
The Liebherr LR 1300 crawler crane was erected in its maximum lattice boom configuration - the combination of the 120 m main boom and 126 m luffing jib produced a lattice boom system with an overall length of 246 m. Mounted on a solid crawler chassis, the crane reached 248 m.
According to Liebherr, the crawler crane is 86 m higher than Ulm Minster, Germany, which has the highest church spire in the world at 162 m. The LR 1300 is able to lift a load of 642 tonnes on to the spire of Ulm Minster in a single hoist, equivalent to approximately 600 small cars.
With the maximum boom length at its steepest angle, the LR 1300 has a load capacity of 68 tonnes. The stability boom system was also successfully tested with a load of 103 tonnes.
For the world record, the LR 1300 was fitted with 400 tonnes of slewing platform ballast and 1,500 tonnes of derrick ballast. The exercise was completed on special foundation with a large number of lattice segments for the 246 m boom, which was bolted together on the ground.
The derrick winch then started and the boom was slowly raised. The wheels on the pulley cart on which the luffing jib was mounted also started to turn and the cart moved towards the base machine.
Cables were then installed between the guy rods and the lattice boom to provide additional guying for the luffing jib. The main boom was raised whilst the luffing job was angled downwards further.
After the roller cart was released the hook block was reeved in on a two-line basis. After this the boom system, now weighing 700 tonnes, was raised rapidly.
The first load lifted by the crane was a twin-axle mobile crane, an LTM 1030-2.1 weighing 24 tonnes.
