MINI CRANES Ӏ SECTOR REPORT
locations. So it is mobile, it is used in confined areas. I think the fact that it is compact and almost handcrafted makes it the equivalent of a specialty tool. If a repairman reaches into his bag he won’t be just grabbing the big hammer anymore. He’s saying, ‘I am a craftsman, I need the tiny ball-peen hammer to do this job well.’ This is artwork.
Stadium Standout
The Palfi nger PCC 57.002 is large for a mini- crane. In fact at 26 tonnes in weight it might not qualify for that category at all, but for one feature which allows it to get through narrow and low underpasses or doorways into the small spaces inside factories and half-fi nished buildings that are the natural habitat of the minis: it can split itself in half. The crane unit can separate itself from its crawler chassis. The chassis is low enough to be manoeuvred through tight entrances; and – here’s the clever bit – the crane part of the machine can walk itself along on its outriggers, through those same small entrances, and then lift itself up to reattach to the crawler base once inside. As was demonstrated recently at
Salzburg’s Red Bull Arena. The stadium's stand was to be extended. To do this, nine concrete elements, each weighing 1.3 tonnes, had to be lifted over the stand. There were a number of challenges to overcome: The low stadium entrance had a clearance of just
“So the timing is perfect. It's
a perfect storm. The economy is good right now. The marketplace is ready for the mini crane as a product and the piece that's been missing all along is the dealer network.”
Which is what Maeda America has been setting in place. It now has dealership agreements with Wood’s CRW operating out of
Vermont – to serve in the northeast New England and Pennsylvania; in Cleveland, Ohio there's ALL Crane, which has branches in Illinois and Indiana; and with Australian crane company Preston Rentals, which has up to now been a user of Maeda cranes rather than a dealer but which is moving to become a dealer in the US under the name Yello, with locations
2.83 metres and a width of 2.87 metres; aisles were narrow with barely any space to turn around, and precise specifi cations of the load-bearing surface allowed a maximum load of 16 tonnes. “It quickly became clear to us that this was a challenging job that a standard four-axle truck crane would never have been able to handle. It would not have been able to enter the stadium or meet the weight requirements,” says Markus Egger,
foreman at construction company Doll, which carried out the expansion of the stand. “The only logical and feasible solution was the Palfi nger PCC 57.002.” At the low-clearance stadium entrance
the Palfi nger crawler did its crane-unit-from- chassis separation trick. That is how it was able to pass through into the stadium arena. Using its own outriggers, the crane part was able gradually to shift itself along the narrow aisles to its operating locations while remaining optimally balanced and stabilised. Once there and re-connected to the chassis, it was ready to work. So as not to damage the fi rst fl oor of the stand in the stadium while the concrete elements were being lifted into place, the work had to be carried out with millimetre precision on all sides, which was no great problem. For Egger, this was the fi rst but not the last time he deployed a PCC 57.002: “Whether in the stadium or for other special applications with low access heights, such as in car parks — we are impressed with the compact size combined with excellent manoeuvrability of the Palfi nger crawler crane. It is also possible to drive the crane with a suspended load. This is defi nitely a solution we can recommend.”
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