CONTROLS
STAYING UNDER CONTROL
Crane controls have been revolutionised since the arrival of variable frequency drives. Julian Champkin looks at the different systems available.
Today, they are more likely to be pushing knobs than pulling levers. They can be standing below the crane or walking along with it, attached to it only by a cable with a pendant control box that they are holding; or not physically connected to it at all, but communicating by wireless remote control. Nor do they have to be near the crane. They can be perfectly comfortable in a warm office some distance away, manipulating a mouse or a joystick or a keyboard, their view of load, hook and crane provided by screens in front of them fed by half a dozen video cameras mounted at various points on the crane. Control systems are digital now, and they offer many more possibilities. Being digital, we speak in digitalese, of human-machine interfaces rather than knobs or levers. Konecranes divide them into four basic systems: pendant control; radio control; control from a traditional crane-mounted cabin; or control from a remote operating station.
Every crane operator needs their lucky pendant Pendant controls may seem traditional to the point of obsolescence: why have your control-box tied to the crane when it could just as easily be connected to it wirelessly?
A collision avoidance control panel from Street Cranexpress eases operators’ tasks.
or overhead crane, in a glazed cabin high up on the bridge-girder itself and as often as not moving along with the bridge itself as they skilfully manipulated their load. It might have been lonely, draughty and cold up there but it did at least give them a good, if distant, view of what they were doing. If the crane and load jerked, it was their fault; if it swayed, it was their fault; if it set down a metre or two away from the desired position, that too was down to them. It was an extremely skilled job.
O 22 | March 2026 |
www.hoistmagazine.com
nce upon a time, cranes were controlled by someone pulling levers. The levers were on the crane, in a cab at its base or, for a gantry
But pendant control still has its adherents and its uses, and still sells well. Simplicity is one of its selling points. “There is still a market for pendant controls,” says James Salter of Street Cranexpress. “They are still cheaper than radio remote systems, though prices for the latter have come down a lot in the past ten to 15 years; that price drop is probably due to more manufacturers entering the populated market. But cranes with smaller footprints tend to offer less of an advantage for radio as the working envelope is smaller.” This would seem a partial reversal from the early years of wireless control, when reliability of signal reception faded rapidly with increasing distance. But pendants have a more fundamental advantage: “Some environments will not allow radio technology due to interference in critical plant or machinery. And in this application a pendant controller would be used.” Pendant controllers today are digital reincarnations of the old-fashioned systems. They offer in particular smoother operation and more variable speeds;
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