Grove combines control and lifting power

German firm Autokrane Schares used its Grove GMK5250L all terrain crane in downtown Dortmund during the construction of a new building that leases storage boxes.

Schares chose to use the five-axle crane for its manoeuvrability, as the job site had a tight entrance road and limited space in which to park the crane.

The loads the crane was to lift presented another challenge: asymmetrical precast elements that weighed up to 18 tonnes, each with an imbalanced centre of gravity.

To create enough space for traffic to flow on the site, the pieces were lifted horizontally, directly from trucks at the edge of the property, and then lowered vertically to the final position in the building. The pieces were up to 14 metres long.

The GMK5250L passed comfortably through an entrance road with a width of only 4 m, thanks to its 3 m-wide chassis. The powerful VIAB power train with its turbo clutch module gave the driver precise control without excessive wear on the vehicle during manoeuvring and braking.

The crane was parked at the rear of the property for the entire project so trucks (and trailers) had enough room to pass. The 250 tonne crane, equipped with a 70 m boom, lifted the lighter, 12 tonne precast elements at a radius of 35 m, and the heavier 18 tonne pieces at a radius of 25 m.

Andy Köhn, who operated the crane for Schares during the project, said the GMK5250L’s Crane Control System (CCS) made a valuable impact on the project, along with several of the crane’s other features.

“The ability to smoothly control the boom and hoist line individually allowed us to manage the precast element's unfavourable centre of gravity. The boom configurator of the CCS was very helpful in this respect.

"I needed only to enter a few data points in order to select the best possible setup options from lifting capacity tables of about 5,000 pages,” he said. “The conveniently arranged operating controls and the easy-to-operate jog dial allowed me to concentrate fully on the lift, which was not the simplest one ever performed.”

Autokrane Schares is an owner-operated provider of crane, transportation, and erection services, and a lift platform leasing company. In addition to its headquarters in Bocholt, the company has additional branches in Essen, Gelsenkirchen, Goch and Willich, and accepts projects throughout Germany.

The company's fleet includes truck cranes, mobile folding cranes, mobile crawler cranes and telescopic crawler cranes with lifting capacities that range from 12 to 500 tonnes. Several of its cranes are Grove models.