Pair of GMK5250Ls completes tandem lift in tight quarters at Bamberg port
Merkel Autokrane recently faced a special challenge at Bamberg port. Its job was to lift a port crane and laterally load it onto a ship. The port crane weighed 92 t and was 18 m in height and was installed on a 3.5 m quay wall which limited the available space for another crane to lift it as it would have to be positioned between the quay wall and the Main-Danube canal.
The crane's available swing radius was less than 10 m; therefore using a large crawler crane or mobile crane was not feasible. A Grove GMK5250L however was able to navigate the tight working quarters. Its compact dimensions particularly in terms of outriggers combined with its 250 t lifting capacity made it an ideal choice. Merkel decided on a tandem lift with two GMK5250Ls the second of which was provided by Augé GmbH of Würzburg.
“The quay wall bordering the jobsite made it impossible to deploy a larger crane " said Merkel Autokrane field technician Karl-Heinz Göring. "These circumstances made tandem lifting with the two compact Grove GMK5250Ls the most efficient solution for our approach to the project because they allowed us to make effective use of the available space and keep expenses as low as possible."
The company positioned the two GMK5250Ls directly next to the quay wall to the right and left of the port crane. Merkel's GMK5250L was equipped with a counterweight of 80 t and for its share of the lift raised 65 t; the crane from Augé was equipped with a 70 t counterweight and lifted the remaining 27 t of the port crane’s base frame. Boom length on both cranes was 28.5 m which enabled them to achieve the required lifting capacity as well as a lift radius between 8 m and 10 m (8 m when lifting the port crane and 10 m during its lateral loading onto a ship anchored in the port).
The two crane operators communicated with wireless radios and were able to coordinate their lifting plan with precision. Merkel had previously used its GMK5250L to dismantle other components of the port crane such as its boom. As a result the work lasted five days which included job site preparation and two days of tandem lifts of the base frame.
Based in Bamberg Merkel Autokrane has been performing lifting and transport services for its customers since 1998. It maintains a fleet of more than 25 mobile cranes transport vehicles and assembly tools. Augé of Würzburg was founded in 1960 and offers truck cranes ranging from 25 t up to 250 t for a variety of applications. Both companies added the Grove GMK5250L to their fleets in early 2015.
