August 13 - Air Products has taken delivery of two Shuttlelift DB 70 double-beam mobile gantry cranes for its facilities in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania and Palmetto, Florida.
The Shuttlelift mobile gantry cranes will be responsible for putting products on railcars or trucks, and moving parts on site, both indoors and outdoors.
Air Products' facility in Pennsylvania had short, narrow doorways, which were not suitable for accommodating a 70-tonne capacity mobile gantry crane, so the company approached Shuttlelift to see if it could design a DB 70 that was able to move through the existing doorway.
While a typical Shuttlelift DB 70 has a ground-to-hook height of 30 ft (9.14 m) and an inside clear width of approximately 40 ft (12.19 m), the new crane would have to fit within a 20 ft (6.09 m) x 20 ft (6.09 m) space.
"We knew this was going to be a unique challenge for our engineers, because the crane would have to fit the doorways and be able to lift the product," said Shuttlelift's sales manager, Dan Reinholtz.
Another challenge, explained Shuttlelift, was that Air Products' facilities have equipment tracks on the floor, which the crane cannot touch.
Since Air Products did not want to move all of the tracks, Shuttlelift found another way to solve the problem. "We took our normal wheel frames and put a special cut in them to give us 20 inches (50 cm) of clearance off the ground," said Reinholtz.
