APPLICATION REPORT | PAPER & CARD
Ingersoll Rand recently sold one such R A Demag 5.2-tonne bridge crane equipped with an Aerolift vacuum lifting attachment.
According to the University of Minnesota, the average paper mill uses 70 litres of water per kilogram of paper produced. As a result, the lifting equipment in paper mills must be waterproof, and therefore the industry preference is for pneumatic hoists with full safety controls. Ingersoll Rand, Koski says, has recently received a number of requests for hoists that are both IP65 water resistant and radio remote controlled. “More and more, people want the
operator removed from the load area,” Koski says. “If they’re using a wire rope winch, they tend to want longer pendants that allow the operator to move further away from the load. That way, if the wire rope snaps, it doesn’t injure the operator.” Tandem lifting units are also popular
in paper and card applications, even with corrugated board. Koski says that lifting the steel rolls that support the paper sheets typically involves either a synchronized double-hook system, which can be a complicated and expensive install, or two separate air hoists that run synchronously. Recently, though, technological innovations in pneumatic hoists have made this process simpler, easier, less expensive, and safer. “Pneumatic logic has gotten better. If
you run all the lines out to a centre point and then run equal length of hose and fittings, then you can use two hoists with one pendant that splits the load. Also, more and more customers in North America are requiring an emergency stop and overload protection. These requirements have been in the European safety directives for decades, but they’re not required in North America,” says Koski. He adds, one situation Ingersoll Rand
has encountered involves operators or maintenance workers who have a stuck load. In these situations, the operator may attempt to pull the load too abruptly in order to free it, resulting in shock loading. At this point, many operators will increase the pneumatic pressure to lift the load, resulting in stress and damage to the hoist components.
“In that situation, overload protection limits the hoist’s ability to be overly stressed, so it won’t lift more than a certain set point – usually 125% of designated load capacity,” adds Koski. Other safety concerns have also
prompted innovation in the pulp mill winches that lift incoming wood logs. Koski says it’s common for these mills to use an outdoor conveyor-based feeder system when machining the logs, and this feeder system is prone to jams. When a log inevitably becomes wedged in the feeder, the operator removes it using a choker sling hooked to a winch.
winch to a client for installation at a pulp mill. “This was a 5 (metric) tonne air winch,” Koski says. “The wire rope ran up around the sheave and fed out to the conveyor. At their first structure about 40 or 50 feet away, there was another sheave. The operator had a 40-foot pendant that was plumbed from a hard-pipe connection at the first sheave point. The wire rope could be hooked around the log and run directly, or, if they needed to pull the log away from the winch, they’d run the rope out to the end, walk up the conveyor, put it through a second sheave, and put it back on the log to pull the log away from the winch.” The Covid-19 pandemic has boosted demand for a variety of paper and card products while simultaneously forcing manufacturers to implement new safety and mitigation procedures. Meanwhile, paper and card companies are investing in capacity expansion, real-time hoist monitoring tools, ergonomically designed lifting equipment, and a variety of new technologies that improve use of space or reduce downtime. While paper in general is trending downward, extensive growth in e-commerce is creating demand for cardboard and packaging materials significant enough to place pressure on producers. Sales of specialty pulp and paper products, like toilet paper and medical-grade pulp, have grown since the start of the pandemic. Automation and safety technology remain priorities, and improvements in pneumatic logic have enabled simpler tandem lifts. There is also a considerable push within the industry to find innovative new ways to more efficiently use existing space and resources. Hoist equipment providers that cater to specialty paper companies will find opportunities for growth, provided they can meet the unique needs of niche markets. ●
ROLLING ALONG
Laakirchen Papier in Laakirchen, Austria is a Heinzel Group subsidiary and a paper manufacturer specializing in graphic paper for newspapers and magazines, as well as packaging paper and board. The company had recently modernized and expanded its manufacturing facility, resulting in a that necessitated the building of a new shipping store. But with only 2,700 square could not tolerate long delays in product
going out. It was essential that the delivery trucks hauling paper out of the shipping Demag installed two process cranes measuring 33 metres each, along with two separate winches. The process cranes are equipped with vacuum lifters, and the winches travel independently of each other. The system as a whole can move up to 104 paper rolls every hour, reducing loading time by 30%. Laakirchen can now load a delivery truck in 12 minutes.
www.hoistmagazine.com | July 2021 | 27
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