Success has brought problems for cast iron parts maker Fritz Winter Eisengiesserei. At its Stadtallendorf works in Germany, where it makes car parts like brake discs, engine blocks and tyre rims, it needs more oxygen. Cast iron uses a lot of the gas during the molten metal preparation and road tankered supplies are now insufficient.
The answer is an oxygen generating plant on site. Working with its supplier, Air Products from London, the company decided to build a plant on site to fill its gas storage tanks and eliminate tanker deliveries. But a facility like that is enormous. The core equipment is in a column 23.5m high and just the column envelope weighs 75t. And that was to be made far away in Wales. With a transport envelope of 23.5m by 4m by 4.2m moving this item was going to be some task.
Projector Transport Service BV of Rotterdam won the transport and installation contract. Compressors and process modules also had to be delivered and various other items needed to be collected from suppliers all round Europe. All of it had to arrive in time for a single weekend installation, the only time that could be spared for assembly at the busy works.
The main challenge of course was the transport of the column which had to be collected in Acrefair in Wales.
In the short time available the only way to get any kind of useful road permit was to go for a rigid vehicle length of less than 27m from kingpin to trailer end. By using a platform over the column this could be done and, though that meant a transport height of 5.1m, it was possible to find a suitable route through the UK with that clearance. The unit made its first move of 400km.
But 5.1m was no use on mainland Europe where all the route options involved lower viaducts. After transhipment at Rotterdam, therefore, the column went onto a 150t capacity vessel carrier. Transport height was now reduced to 4.35 m, but the overall length of the vehicle had grown to 60m.
For 600km this was satisfactory, with nothing more than a few signals and light masts to move.
But just 200m away from the works installation point was a small shopping street lined with trees, and right in the middle was a corner to be negotiated. To get round this would normally involve moving bus stops, signals and other street furniture and then perhaps spending hours shunting the trailer around.
The solution was self-propelled modular trailers, whose tight steering capacity combined with reduced dimensions allowed the column to negotiate this last corner without touching as much as a tree branch alongside the roads.
A 500t capacity Liebherr LTM 1500 telescopic crane assisted by an LTM 1100 completed the column’s journey on schedule. The cranes went on to lift 20 other major pieces of equipment into place over the next two days. All that remains now is to finish the complex piping and electrical connections and the factory will be able to breathe again.
New from Goldhofer this year is the STX-VH9 – the first transporter on the market to feature swing axles and air operated disk brakes for 19.5″ tyres, the manfuacturer says. The combination offers heavy duty load moving but with high manoeuvrability and safety in operation as well as better maintenance and damage resistance.
First of the new trailers was delivered to Fritz Sünkler GmbH in Kiel. Training in use of the trailer was included as part of the sale.
The large size wheel and rim diameters on the trailers allow the complete brake and its cylinder to kept within the wheel diameter. This means that the whole assembly is protected against damage during manoeuvring operations and when the vehicle is crossing kerbs.
The design was made possible partly by the use of use of axles from the Gigant group. The so called Protec-swing axle, developed by Gigant, is fitted with a maintenance-free compact bearing. These axles are guaranteed for six years or one million kilometres, whichever comes first.
According to Goldhofer CEO Stefan Fuchs, the new swing axle aggregate offers significant advantages, including high braking power, reliability, fewer lubrication points, protected brake cylinders, and fewer components meaning faster change of brake pads
‘It is a world novelty to operate the swing axle with the 19.5 inch disk brake directly by compressed air,’ Fuchs says.
The STZ-VH 9 has a gross weight of 132t and can travel at up to 80km/hour.
Deadweight of the vehicle is 51.7t with its extendable vessel carrying bridge in a basic configuration, and the payload is 80.3t.
These figures are altered slightly if the bridge is extended.
Axle loading is nine times 12t and the fifth wheel load is 24t. The trailer is 2.75m wide.
Several drilling platform modules destined for offshore rigs in the Gulf of Mexico were loaded out onto a barge at New Iberia in Louisiana, USA recently. The modules weighed approximately 1,000t each and had to be moved some 200m and then turned through 25°.
Heavy haulage specialist Berard Transportation used three self-propelled Goldhofer trailers fitted with 14 axle lines each. Onto these went the bulky platforms which are 35m long, 35m wide and up to 35m high.
For the route up to the barge the road was consolidated with steel plates over the whole length to enable the ground to cope with the high pressures. Getting the loads over ramps and on board ship was made possible partly because the trailers have an hydraulic axle compensating capacity to balance out uneven distribution of loads to help pass over obstacles.
Operational control was done by just one man using a remote control unit. The 84 swing axles with their 336 tyres were synchronised electronically.
Imagination, investigation and careful planning are all part of the heavy moving business and US firm Barnhart Crane & Rigging used all of them to solve a difficult problem in Tennessee earlier this year.
The task was to move a 254t transformer unit from the Port of Memphis, through the city centre, and on to Brownsville by railway. But expert opinion was that the unit was too big and that the trestle bridges and other obstacles along the way would prevent the load being moved.
Barnhart conducted its own high precision survey of the rail and calculated that the unit could just fit through.
Project manager Randy Lewis explains: ‘Schenker International contacted Barnhart to move two transformers from the Memphis port on the Mississippi river to Brownsville. Typically, heavy equipment is moved by rail; however in this case one of the transformers was so large that it was thought that there would not be enough clearance on all sides. At that point our engineers began working with structural engineers from the city of Memphis, along with county and city municipalities, to determine if the transformer could be moved by road on a specialised 24-dolly transporter.’
But this began to look extremely cumbersome and estimates showed it would also be very costly. Barnhart decided to re-examine the option of using the railway
‘We selected a laser measuring device manufactured by L.Kopia to complete a 360° survey of the entire rail route to Brownsville. The laser device provided us with schematic drawings of every aspect of the route. If there was a trestle, the laser measured it; if there was a truss hanging over the rail, the laser measured it too,’ Lewis says.
Barnhart worked out that the best way to move the equipment was by placing an articulating slide system under each transformer, mounting them to railcars and hiring a special train capable of hauling the load.
The cargo, which originated in South Africa, had been shipped to new New Orleans and then up river by barge. Barnhart used its 1,250-ton derrick crane Ichabod to off-load the cargo at the Memphis docks, where it runs one of the terminal facilities.
The rail journey proved successful and the laser survey proved accurate. It had to be: in some instances clearance was only a matter of centimetres.
• Elsewhere, on a machinery moving project for a large gas fired power plant in El Dorado, Arkansas, Barnhart came up with a solution to get passed bridge loading limits. The project involved transporting more than 120 turbines, generators, boiler modules and other machinery weighing approximately 10km from the railroad siding to the construction site. The route crossed two bridges unable to support the full weight of the equipment. Barnhart towed into position a ‘bridge-jumping’ device and hydraulically lowered it onto the bridge. This allowed cargo weighing 250t to be transported across spans that would not normally be able to accommodate such loads. The bridge jumper erects itself and distributes the weight load across the bridge, allowing the heavy equipment to move across .
In Italy recently a 220t stator had to be transported by road to Cassano d’ Adda power station. Heavy haulage company Fumagalli of Milan used hydraulic trailer modules and beams produced by Industrie Cometto SpA.
The transporter consisted of various modular platform trailers coupled together to form 15 rows of axles at either end of the trailer, which in turn supported the large transporter beams. The entire load was supported on 240 tyres.
The stator arrived at the port of Cremona on a barge before Fumagalli transported it by road to Cassano d’Adda power station 90km away.
The road section of the move was a tortuous route with inclines of 7% for much of the distance. There were also rail crossings with which to contend and low power lines to add to the difficulties.
The length of the transporter and vehicles was more than 60m but with the help of the hydraulic steering and suspension of the Cometto modules the entire operation was completed in a single night.
• Cometto shipped a large order
to the Middle East in the summer which included various four- and five-axle extendable semitrailers. Cometto makes a range of these in single, double or even triple extensions if required. All the axles are power steered automatically but can be manually overridden from either the control panel or a radio control unit when requested. The trailers have payloads ranging from 70t to 90t, and use the Cometto hydraulic suspension system which allows platform heights to be adjusted as required.
