New Elebia hook

Spanish hook manufacturer Elebia has unveiled a new 20 tonne capacity automatic hook designed for lifting bell furnaces. The Neo hook’s inherent safety features mean it is well-suited to environments where metals are heated to extreme temperatures, Elebia said.

The Neo can also be used for lifting and manoeuvring loads that have an oversized lifting point (up to 100 mm diameter), Elebia added.

A multi-colour-coded light-emitting diode (LED) status indicator displays green when the hook is open and blue when it’s closed. Oscar Fillol, Elebia founder and CEO, explained, “In regular lifting operations with bell furnaces, the operator has a limited line of sight and poor visibility of the lifting hook’s position and engagement with the lifting point. The status indicator is an additional safety measure. It can be viewed in all operating conditions and displays on the [optional] eMax remote control unit.”

Elebia said it is not possible to make a lift while the hook is in an intermediate state (red). The hook will only lift the load once the closure mechanism is locked, indicated by illumination of the blue LED status indicator.

The optional eMax remote control includes a full colour liquid-crystal display (LCD) screen and shows information about the lifting application, including weight and the hook status. It also has alarms that alert the operator to overload or unbalanced situations. It is only supplied as an option because there are many instances in bell furnace lifts where an operator will not need to know how much weight is being lifted, explained Elebia.

The Neo hook has: a 4:1 safety factor. On a charge it can work for one week, covering 3,000 cycles, or more than 250 hours in standby mode. The top link can be customised. A three-hour charge will return the battery to full capacity, said Elebia, and the hook will remain closed even if the battery expires during use. Further, due to the geometry of NEO’s design, the load will always be positioned in the centre of the hook, the company added.