MANUAL CHAIN HOISTS | MAINTENANCE
across all forms of lifting equipment, including electric and manual chain hoists. The types of faults he sees include
CINSPECT IT, P
hil Simpson is an engineer at CraneServe, a crane maintenance and inspection company based in the UK. In his job, he comes
issues with safety catches, chain stretching, hooks stretching, contortion, and worn top return sprockets. Overloading is usually the cause of such
problems, with people using equipment for tasks they haven’t been designed for; for example – taking a load with a manual chain hoist, and then lifting it further with a crane. “Obviously,” says Simpson, carrying out manoeuvres such as that “tends to overload the hoist, and then it can elongate the chain or smash brake pads, and stuff like that.” Another issue he sees is contamination. “You tend to find brake disks can get contaminated on the inside with grease and
lubrication, and the atmosphere they’ve been in affects the sort of contamination they can have,” says Simpson. “Obviously, in dusty environments, dust can get in and contaminate the brake disks, so you can have load slips and stuff like that.” Contamination can also take the form of what Simpson calls “grinding paste”. He continues: “If you are lubricating the chain, the environment needs to be considered. For example, if you were working in a welding bay and there’s a lot of contamination in the air – welding particles, or even a dusty environment – what can happen is if you put a thick grease on the chain, all that contamination in the air sticks to the chain. So as it’s going over the top return sprocket, it’s basically dragging through debris. It’s making a grinding paste and making things worse.” There are alternatives to greasy lubricants, as Simpson highlights: “Obviously, if you use quite a runny lube, or a thick greasy lube in humid conditions, it can drip.
ORRECT IT
Tony Rock speaks to a crane engineer to find out the kinds of maintenance issues that can affect manual chain hoists.
What we would normally recommend is a PTFE, dry moly or graphite lubricant spray – a dry lubricant for those sort of conditions – so it’s not dripping down and contaminating the product.” He adds that he has recently recommended a dry lubricant to a customer running a paper factory. While Simpson says it’s up to customers
under the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations (Puwer) to maintain their equipment to the required standards, the reality is that all too often they don’t even carry out pre-use examinations. “By right, they should be doing a pre-use check before they use any sort of lifting equipment,” he says. “But, obviously, nine times out of ten times they don’t do it. They just tick a box and say they have looked at it – in reality, that could be very dangerous.” CraneServe offers its customers an
examination scheme, as Simpson explains: “Different situations require different types of examinations at different times. What we normally put in place is an examination
QR “Here are some photos from a damaged chain from a manual chain hoist,” says CraneServe’s Phil Simpson. “The wear is on the saddle of the link and the nicks you see are from the operators wrapping the chain around something and hooking the hook back on the chain – essentially creating a choke around the part being lifted. Obviously, this damages the links and is a big no-no.”
38 | April 2023 |
www.hoistmagazine.com
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