AUTOMATION AUTOMATIC GEAR
With new technology comes key transformation. Automation is just one of many that is transforming industrial construction. For the lifting industry in particular, semi and fully automated lifting equipment offers many benefits, from optimising material flow to ensuring operations are safer for workers. Julian Champkin explores the differences between semi and fully automated lifting and the key benefits they each offer.
Demag’s KBK light crane system can help automate lifting processes up to 2t capacity.
a small manufacturing plant with an overhead monorail that performs the same simple task over and over again. Or you may be operating something in between, with never the same lifts running twice and an operator having to decide the start and endpoint of each load with no easily discernible pattern between them. All of these systems can be automated, fully or at least partially. A plant does not have to be big. It is a myth that large, high-capacity overhead gantry or double-gantry cranes are the only ones worth the trouble and expense of automating. Light monorail and enclosed rail crane systems can be automated. Even simple chain hoists can be fitted with variable speed lifting and lowering, geared limit switches, encoders and load measurement devices. For horizontal travel, monorails and runways can be given variable speed tractor drives, encoders and travel limit switches to make
Y 30 | March 2026 |
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ou may be operating a huge plant with multiple overhead bridge cranes of high capacity carrying out complex and variable lifts. You may be operating
it all happen. Onboard control system signals from PLCs – programmable logic controllers – can connect offline equipment to the automation, either through wires or wirelessly.
Demag say that their KBK light crane monorail systems can help automate lifting processes up to 2t capacity. Used with DC electric chain hoists they offer a wide range of options: the system can include automated branching components such as curves, track switches, turntables, and interlocks, which operate at the press of a button from an operator – or automatically as directed by that PLC. Either way the load is sent to the particular destination that is required. It is a modular system, and the possibilities, say Demag, are practically endless. Just as an example, if each load is identified with a RFID tag or similar, the PLC could direct it along whichever branchline is needed to its proper destination – and can note that on an automated warehousing programme to show how much stock is available and where each item is stored.
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