What is a crawler crane? What are the advantages and disadvantages of the crawler crane? It turns out that cranes are a type of heavy equipment or heavy equipment that is often used in project work, industry, ports, workshops and warehouses. The crane is one of the machines for transporting and handling materials.
What is a Crawler Crane?
Crawler crane is a type of mobile crane. In general, mobile cranes are of two types, namely mobile cranes with tires and mobile cranes with crawler wheels.
Tracks are centipede wheels or track wheels. Most of the crawler cranes have booms with a lattice structure (lattice) which is an advantage of the crawler crane in lifting heavy materials, and the lattice structure can be disassembled.
This crawler crane also uses an operator who controls it from inside the superstructure for its operation.
Crawler Crane Parts
- Boom
The part of a crawler crane that plays an important role is the boom. This boom section plays a role in lifting or lowering materials and moving materials.
This section has three locations, viz arm lift position or lifting position, arm lifting position or standing position and arm holding position or fixed position.
- Tracked
This section works like a crane wheel and moves the crane by crawling across the work area.
- Superstructure
It is a crane control room for crane operators, a place for cranes to rotate, or a place for other work equipment.
- Flake
The working part gives the arm an additional stretch for the increase in the specified load.
- Counterweight
This counterweight is a ballast or weight that functions to balance the weight of the material being lifted or moved and the load of the crane in order to maintain stability while the material is being lifted or moved.
- Additional counterweight
This is added weight to provide more stability when lifting and moving materials.
- Tree
This section is the part that functions to support and support the wire or rope balancing cranes, pulleys and hoists or hooks.
- Sheaves
The part for holding the wire rope which is a pulley with a grooved wheel.
- To lift
The hoist is a part which is a machine unit for lifting or lowering loads.
- Pulley
This section works to adjust the hook or tackle to raise or lower in a circular motion.
After knowing the parts of a crawler crane and the function of each part, you should also know the advantages and disadvantages of this type of mobile crane.
The types of cranes or mobile cranes have their advantages or disadvantages, and their function is to lift different materials.
Advantages of crawler cranes
Crawler cranes are heavy mobile cranes classified as heavy lift cranes due to their ability to help with extra heavy work.
- Cargo transportation
Crawler cranes are known for their ability to lift loads of material and can also be used as a means of transporting loads. This is because crawler cranes do not use stabilizing devices
- Lifting capacity
The lifting capacity of the crawler crane is very large. Crawler cranes are capable of lifting extra large capacity loads of material because these crawler cranes are mounted on an undercarriage that includes rollers, sprockets, top rollers, idlers and more.
The lifting capacity of this crawler crane ranges from 40 to 3500 tons, so this crawler crane is widely used in various heavy load demands, such as dragline, pilling, clampshell and other heavy duty involved in large-scale projects.
- Stability
Another advantage of the crawler crane type mobile crane over other types of mobile cranes is its stability.
Crawler cranes can remain stable on rails or lanes even when operating in extreme design areas, such as rough, rocky, hard or muddy terrain structures. The crawler wheels also increase the stability of this crawler crane type mobile crane.
- Safety during operation
Crawler cranes are operated by an operator who controls the crane from within the control room.
In operating it, the operator is assisted by the features and technology contained in this crawler crane, such as an overload indicator alarm and safety tools from a sophisticated computer that help prevent unwanted things when working in the project area.
- Mobility
The next advantage of the crawler crane is the mobility issue. The point is, this crawler crane can be disassembled. The lattice boom section of this crawler crane can be disassembled and adapted to the workload in order to facilitate work mobilization during operation.
Disadvantages of crawler cranes
This crawler crane has many advantages or advantages that help work during its operation. However, this crawler crane type mobile crane also has disadvantages.
- This
Due to its ability to perform heavy work, such as lifting or moving materials with very large loads, the dimensions of this crawler crane are larger than other types of mobile cranes.
Its large size makes the movement of this crawler crane relatively slow even though it has a fairly stable mobilization.
- Substantial costs
Its large size means that this crawler crane requires an additional transport truck to get to the project or construction site.
Relocating this crane using another transport vehicle, such as a road train, requires a significant amount of money to move it to the site or project area.
Conclusion
In conclusion from the above description, the crawler crane is a type of mobile crane which is used to transport extra large loads due to its ability to handle heavy work in the working area.
This is a short discussion of to know more regarding one of the heavy equipment, namely the advantages and disadvantages of the crawler crane. We hope this article can add to your insight.
