TGHI pulls to 7,500 tonnes and 120 metres

Upping its stake in the super heavy lifting tower market is Taegwang Heavy Industry Co (TGHI) with a 7,500 tonne capacity system.

The Korean company already offers an hydraulic lifting tower system with a rated capacity of 6,500 tonnes. Uttam Kim, TGHI executive director for global strategy, told IC that the erection tower has now been updated and upgraded so that it can lift 7,500 tonnes.

Applications include erection of large structures such as Goliath type gantry cranes in shipyards that weigh thousands of tonnes and to erect bridges and tall, heavy refinery vessels and other chemical industry and energy sector elements. TGHI offers the erection tower for rent.

The steel lattice boom structured device has a maximum mast height of 132 metres and offers a lifting height of 120 metres. For lifting the 6,500 tonne system has hydraulic jacking units in up to 12 sets of climbing blocks. Each unit has four cylinders and 542 tonnes of capacity per unit. Operating pressure is 290 bar and the stroke is 350 mm. Jacking speed is 5 mm per second. Kim said that the erection tower is designed to operate in wind speeds of 15, up to a maximum of 20 metres per second. It is designed to cope with a maximum out of service wind speed of 55 m/sec.

Operation is manual from a local display panel or via remote control. A weight balancing feature with double-acting cylinders is designed to equalise all the load weight evenly so that the tower is not subject to any asymmetric loading. An emergency block function is incorporated to allow operations to stop when the load is in a raised position. Components in the climbing block can be replaced without having to dismantle the tower. For transport and storage the tower can be dismantled to flat panels or individual pieces.

A recent application for the tower erection system was on the new 2,000 tonne capacity travelling gantry crane at the Engevix Ecovix shipyard in Rio Grande, Brazil, working for the crane manufacturer Konecranes. Other cranes used on the project included wheeled mobile telescopic cranes of 100, 250, 400 and 500 tonnes capacity and a 750 tonne capacity lattice boom crawler.