FEATURE | STEEL CRANES
MAGNETS AT SPECIALIST STEEL COMPANY
Since the beginning of industrialisation, Remscheid in North Rhine- Westphalia has been a centre of the German tool industry. Many manufacturers of high-quality knives and saws have their home here, and Bestar Stahlhandelsgesellschaft has been providing them with special steels since 1978. In addition to hot-rolled wide and narrow strip, and cold-rolled strip, their product range includes tool steel and Bestar originally supplied the local saw and knife industry. It has
grown to a global concern. Today, the company has branches in the USA and China and supplies manufacturers of industrial tools, saws and knives worldwide. As a specialised steel service centre, it also The majority of the steels are delivered as sheets of metal. Bestar
stores the cold and hot strip ready to resell or to process to a wide range of production depths to meet customer requirements. In both cases the metal sheets need to be picked up and handled during storage and retrieval. With conventional lifting technology, this requires slings to be attached to all four corner points. The time required and the risk of an accident during operation must be taken into account in each case. Bestar was therefore looking for an alternative solution that
clear that there was actually only one solution for this task, which was load-lifting magnets. Before proceeding, however, questions needed to be answered: Is this solution as practical as expected? Does it meet with the approval of the operators? And which type of lifting magnet is the right one? Bestar managers decided to test Demag
DBM battery-powered load lifting magnets. With the DBM 2, magnetisable loads weighing up to 2 tons can battery magnets support the operator with up to eight hours of operation: in other words, for an entire shift. The charge level of the battery is always visible on the display on the magnet. The operator has the greatest possible freedom of operation because the DBM’s separate DRC control unit works by radio control. This increases safety by allowing the operator to keep a safe distance away from the sheets and transport them from A to B with the best overview of the complete process. the toggle switch on the radio control, the bottom sheet of a held stack of sheets can be released. This enables the time-saving step. Separating the loads in this way saves a huge amount of time when handling bundles of metal. It is particularly helpful for the employees at BESTAR to be able to detach the metal bundles from use of working time. An additional feature is the demagnetisation function, which can be Bestar’s requirements are fully covered by the DSM’s range of
performance: The application – the handling of metal sheets – is typical for this type of load handling attachment. The DBM model series itself has other special features, including comprehensive and smart safety functions. For example, an automatic switch-on disabler prevents the load from being picked up if the battery voltage is too low: the load can only be picked up if the battery magnet and An automatic power monitor constantly monitors the operating
voltage and issues an acoustic warning if the voltage drops below the minimum operating value. The operator can therefore safely deposit the load and recharge the battery with a residual voltage for ten minutes of operation. Frank Schymura is operations manager at Bestar. He sums up the
result: “There’s no doubt about it, operators need to adapt and trust more ergonomic way of handling the sheets. And we save time and money in the process.”
energy. Another target is to extend the
capability of a specific production process beyond its original limit, in terms of quality of product, with the prospect of serving markets not originally envisaged. All of this changes the role of the
overhead crane. It no longer makes sense – if it ever did - to treat it in isolation. It is no longer an entity in itself, with its own control system – either human or automated. Its control is part of the AI system organising the whole process, from ordering of material to delivery of finished product – and perhaps to the production of new products by varying the parameters of heat, timings, and raw materials while still using
24 | June 2024 |
www.hoistmagazine.com
the same equipment in the plant. So humans need not be anywhere near
all of this. Scared yet? Wait a bit and you might be. For Danieli also speaks of the interaction between artificial ‘intelligence’ and biological ‘intelligence’: “In this sense, the human-machine interaction must be conceived and implemented as an integration between machines and people. The human operator must be able to understand the behaviour of the machine in order to trust it, use it, and bring about its evolution, building a relationship much like those existing between colleagues, with mutual exchange of knowledge and skills.” The distinction between machine
and human begins to break down. We must hope that AI turns out to be a skilled, helpful and co-operative colleague, like most (but sometimes not quite all) of our human ones.
That said, the essentials of making steel - and the physical types of lifting that are needed at the various stages - have not changed. Iron ore and coke still need to be moved; scrap metal remains an ingredient, and has to be delivered to the scrapyard, from where a process crane must transfer it to the foundry. There, the hazards and challenges increase: open flame and molten metals abound. The scrap is loaded in the furnace
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