Alimak Hek revitalises 28-year-old elevator

An Alimak Hek elevator has completed a mast replacement and gearbox overhaul on an elevator it installed for GrainCorp in 1986.

The rack and pinion elevator was installed on GrainCorp’s Gladstone facility, providing access to machinery on top of a 70 m high grain stack.

Located on Australia’s eastern seaboard, GrainCorp’s ports handle more than 5 million tonnes of grain annually, processing wheat, barley, canola, chickpeas and sorghum, delivered to terminals by GrainCorp’s extensive road and rail network.

The Alimak Scando 10/19 rack and pinion elevator, installed in 1986, has been used daily for the routine inspection and maintenance of the grain stack’s conveyor belt machinery. Alimak Hek has provided servicing and maintenance of the elevator throughout its life.

Following an on-site service inspection in early 2012, Alimak Hek technicians identified irreparable corrosive damage to the elevator’s base mast, base frame and mast sections located 25 m up the grain terminal stack. The sections required replacement, which meant that the 70 m mast and base frame had to be dismantled, the corroded sections replaced, and the entire mast re-assembled and installed on the grain stack.

In May 2014, Alimak Hek completed a second minor refurbishment on the GrainCorp elevator, with an electrical system re-circuiting and gearbox overhaul. Originally installed with landing gates on each level of the seven-storey grain stack, the elevator was re-circuited by Alimak technicians to bypass intermediate levels, travelling uninterrupted from ground floor to level six. With the grain conveyor belt system located on the sixth level, the elevator will now provide direct access from ground floor to critical machinery. A new gearbox worm wheel and drive shaft were also fitted.