LIFTING ATTACHMENTS | PRODUCTS


A FIRMLY


Not all loads need a hook. Indeed most loads lack an obvious lifting point, making a hook all but useless. Specialised attachments are the answer. Julian Champkin considers their almost infinite variety.


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Drums, coils of wire, sheets of metal


and concrete kerbstones are just a few commonly lifted loads for which standard hooks are inadequate. Specialised below-the-hook devices and designs, custom-made or off-the-shelf, come in huge, almost endless, varieties. ASME B30-20, the US standard that covers the tagging, load testing, maintenance and inspection requirements of below-the-hook attachments, divides them into six different categories: structural and mechanical lifting devices, vacuum devices, close proximity- operated lifting magnets, remotely operated lifting magnets, scrap and material-handling grapples, and clamps. There must, however, be very many that are put into the first of those categories only because they fit none of the others. Some lifting attachments are powered, some are passive, some ingenuously use the weight of the load to enhance their frictional grip upon it; some are simple, some are very ingenious, and sometimes the simplest ones are also the most ingenious. Consider a common and age-old


problem: that of lifting a block of stone or, these days, of precast concrete. Stonemasons since at least the time of the Romans have used the self-locking scissors action of lifting tongs, and identical devices are still made and used today. GGR,


Q GGR’s scissor grab works on a principle known to the Romans


34 | December 2022 | www.hoistmagazine.com


ou have a load to lift, you have a hoist to lift it with, and you may even have a hook on the end of your hoist rope, but there are


times, and loads, when a hook is just not up to the job.


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