Blumenbecker supplies crane to glass manufacturer – High-precision work during normal operation

Not a bull in a china shop in sight

»Alas, fortune and glass soon break, « the old saying goes. While Blumenbecker Industrie-Service GmbH can’t do anything about luck, it certainly has a clean record when it comes to glass, as it ably demonstrated recently by constructing and installing a crane for a glass manufacturer.

Founded in 1989, MBM Techglas GmbH has 27 years of experience in premium plate glass finishing and stands proudly in the › Made in Germany‹ tradition. Working with partners in many different industries, it has been involved in projects ranging from lighting for the Airbus A380 painting hangar in Hamburg to the main railway station in Berlin. High standards are placed on product quality and customer service.

Industrie-Service’s crane-making task was to construct a single-girder gantry crane 5t x 12m with a sectional beam, which it would then also install. »The challenge with the steel construction was taking into account the particularities of the site and handling the steel girders very carefully,« says Michael Hamm, who is in charge of the crane plant. »There was only limited space, so we designed the stanchions and the distances between them individually.« A trolley with optimised clearances makes the most of the lifting height and uses all but 50 mm of the height of the hall.

INSTALLATION DURING NORMAL OPERATION

The next big challenge was to install the crane while the glass factory was running. Stopping production was out of the question. »We had to coordinate installation and production very closely, otherwise we would have got into trouble with our orders,« says MBM Techglas Managing Director Simon Werner. »Dust and dirt are a real problem for glass. The surroundings have to be totally clean to ensure even quality.« Hamm and the Beckum team rose to the challenge. » We did feel a bit like the proverbial bull in a china shop sometimes, with all the sheets of glass around us, but nothing went wrong.« says Hamm. The new gantry crane will speed up positioning of the 3.20 m wide sheets of glass and packs of glass weighing up to 1.8t for further finishing. MBM Techglas will also make savings thanks to more cost-effective procurement, as material delivered in crates and boxes can now be used.

THE TECHNOLOGY

•     Type of crane: Single-girder gantry crane 5 t x 12 m, sectional beam

•     Crane travel: max. 40 m/min

•     Cross travel: max. 20 m/min

•     Lifting/lowering: under full load 8 m/min

•     Load handling attachment: glass grippers

•     Operation mode: cable control

•     To enable modification at a later date, the crae has been designed so that it can be upgraded to remote control and have vacuum grippers fitted.