Metal company upgrades freestanding workstation crane with ELS

ELS provided the right solution for laser cutting at a metal service centre.

Engineered Lifting Systems & Equipment Inc. (ELS) has provided many solutions for customers to make their difficult jobs seem easy – including Gorbel crane equipment. A few years ago, a metal service centre needed to upgrade a Gorbel freestanding workstation crane that it was using to serve a laser-cutting machine. As always, ELS provided a long-term solution that made the application safer, more efficient, and more productive. Here is how it happened.

Retrofit with tractor drives

The company, which sold metal sheet and plate materials, had been using three Gorbel freestanding cranes for several years to serve three different laser-cutting machines. The firm had installed each freestanding workstation crane over each machine, and its employees had been manually moving the bridges and hoist trolleys with attached below-the-hook, self-powering, six-pad vacuum sheet lifters.

This was a time-consuming and physically demanding task for the workers, who had to wrestle with the lifters to get the sheets onto the laser table bed. The swinging movement and the weight of the loaded system made the application unsafe and impractical, but the company liked using the three workstation cranes and did not want to switch to an overhead crane to serve all three work areas. For a better solution, the company turned to ELS.

To make the process work, ELS suggested upgrading one of the work areas – the one with the newest laser – by retrofitting the freestanding workstation crane with tractor drives for bridge travel and hoist trolley travel. With this upgrade, the employees could now use radio controls to manage the x, y, and z movements of the crane system in a smooth, controlled manner. As a result, they could load and unload the laser tables far more quickly, easily, safely, and efficiently.

Not long after the change, the customer began to see a 15-20 per cent time savings per sheet, as opposed to the workers’ previous manual operation of the crane. The company immediately made plans to retrofit the other two Gorbel cranes in the same way. Results like this are typical of the ELS team and its solutions.

To learn more, contact ELS.

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