ACT
AUGUST 2013
38
PRODUCT FOCUS
SPECIALIZED LIFTING
“The press, once fully assembled,
weighs in excess of 3,400 tons and
produces body panels for the two vehicle
models,” says Goddard.
Once assembled, the crowns weighed a
combined 560 tons and measure 80-feet
long by 30-feet wide by 12-feet high.
After assembling the crowns, IICC
moved their gantry systems over
the crowns and rigged the load for
lifting. They employed eight gantry units
in total, four Riggers Manufacturing E-Z
Lift 604T and four E-Z Lift 600T gantry
units from their inventory.
The gantries are equipped with multiple
levels of beams that consist of eight riser
beams, four W36 X 395 boxed header
beams and four W14 X 455 header beams.
The total weight of the beams and
rigging was 143 tons, Goddard says.
“Once the load was ready to lift, the total
weight being lifted by the gantry systems
was 703 tons,” says Goddard. “The gantries
were synchronized in both the lifting and
travel applications so that the placement
of the crowns on their upright supports
would proceed smoothly. The crowns
were lifted to a clear height of 23 feet and
an overall gantry height of 35 feet. The
crowns, once at the correct elevation, were
traveled over 180 feet on their runway
track.”
He says the crowns were precisely
positioned above the uprights and slowly
lowered over the 18 precision body-fit
machine keys.
“After that, we called it a day,” says
Goddard. “The project went very well for
International Industrial Contracting, and
General Motors now has another major
transfer press system in their facility to
produce parts from.”
Dragline transporters
In early 2013, Lampson Australia assisted
with the relocation of three draglines using
the company’s in-house designed and
fabricated Lampson Transport System.
“Our system, which uses three Lampson
Crawler Transporters and a steel support
frame, relocated the draglines in two
stages in order to reassign equipment to
other mines,” says John Lee of Lampson
Australia.
Two of the draglines were Marion 8050s
and one was a BE1370. The draglines
were relocated some 20 to 30 kilometers
on the Norwich Park/Saraji/Park Downs
Coal Mines located in Central Queensland
Australia.
“Some self-walking of the draglines was
required due to timing and steep grades,”
says Lee.
The project took place during the first
half of 2013 and lasted 26 weeks, including
mobilization and demobilization.
“Our onsite personnel performed
brilliantly and molded their services to suit
the demanding mine site requirements,”
says Lee. “In addition, we had no lost time
due to injury, the project was incident free
and was done within the clients planned
time and budget.”
Power plant asset
A small island country in the North
Atlantic, Iceland is the most sparsely
populated country in Europe. It is
comprised of lava fields, volcanic
mountains and glaciers, and glacial
streams provide an immense hydroelectric
resource.
Landsvirkjun, the national power
authority of Iceland, has been developing
new power plants and its ability to
produce large quantities of cheap power
is attracting many industries. Power
plant construction requires moving and
placing large transformers and generators.
Historically, Landsvirkjun has contracted
with European companies to move the
large equipment.
In late 2012, Arni Benediktsson,
director of engineering for Landsvirkjun,
contacted Hydra-Slide Ltd. to investigate
the idea of purchasing its own jacking
and skidding equipment. He wanted
the power authority to have a safe and
simple solution to be able to move their
transformers.
Landsvirkjun ended up purchasing an
LP400 Low Profile Skidding system, a
20-2-4E Synchronous power unit, 55-ton
jacks and Ekki jacking timbers.
Recognizing that their personnel were
unfamiliar with jack-and-slide systems,
Benediktsson requested that Hydra-Slide
representatives be present during the
first job, which involved installing two
transformers.
The two new 82-metric ton transformers
would arrive by ship from Portugal to
the Port of Reykjavik. The plan was to
transport them directly, one by one, to
their final destination at a new Hydro
Power Station in Southern Iceland,
about 150 kilometers from Reykjavik.
The transformers were unloaded off the
Goldhofer trailers using jacks and Ekki
timbers and then skidded to their final
location beside the new power house.
On April 16, 2013, at the Port of
Reykjavik, the first transformer was
loaded onto an 8-line Goldhofer
owned by ET Verslun, a local Iceland
company. The 150-kilometer move
started at midnight and several hours
later, the transformer safely arrived at the
powerhouse site.
The Landsvirkjun crew quickly went
about setting up the Hydra-Slide jacking
equipment, and after a quick learning
session from Hydra-Slide, they easily
unloaded the new transformer, jacked it
down and skid it about 40 feet into place.
The synchronous power unit allowed
them to lower the transformer on all four
points at the same time without the usual
Lampson Australia uses its
in-house designed and fabricated
Lampson Transport System to
move three draglines.
Landsvirkjun
personnel run
the 20-2-4E
Power Unit
