PRODUCT REPORT | BELOW THE HOOK


LOOK, NO HOLES...


Flat plates seem to offer no easy attachment points for a hook. But there is a myriad of below-the-hook devices that can lift them. Julian Champkin reports.


attached to a hook to be lifted. A load almost as common is the flat sheet, of metal or of plywood or of glass, but unlike a coil, a sheet offers no convenient hole to act as a place to grip and lift. Devices for lifting sheets have to therefore attach themselves to the edges, with some sort of mechanical clamp or gripper or lifting ledge, or to the surface, using vacuum pads or, if the load is of steel,


A 22 | April 2024 | www.hoistmagazine.com


few issues back we described the almost-infinite variety of ways in which that common load – a coil of wire – can be


magnets. All these approaches work, some better than others according to the application. It is not surprising therefore that there are almost as many below-the-hook devices for lifting flat sheets are there are for lifting coils. An early distinction can be made: do


you want to lift your sheet in a horizontal orientation, parallel to the ground, or set vertically, upright like a windowpane? There are devices for either, and some that will do both.


Camlok, original inventors of the self- weight clamping concept back in 1958,


devotes no fewer than nine pages of its 65th-anniversary catalogue to vertical plate clamps, and a further five to horizontal ones – which may be an indication of the relative use of the orientations. Vertical clamps grasp the sheet by the top edge. Working load limits of their various models range from 50kg to 3,000kg; for moving long plates vertically they recommend using two clamps with a spreader beam between them. The same clamps can also be used for lifting and moving constructions – that is, your steel sheets


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