subject: Tower Crane Lifting [print this page] Tower crane lifting is the lynchpin of modern construction. Without it, wed still be hauling stones around on bits of wood.
The tower crane is the ultimate example of a human lifting technology that predates the Bible by almost 700 years (the first archaeological evidence of cranes is found in Greek ruins, where stirrups for crane legs are clearly present near temple pediments). Early cranes offered lifting power much greater than that achievable by man power alone, with struts and counterweighted booms swinging weight upwards over a fulcrum. Tower cranes, their modern descendants, give a lifting power superior to any machine on earth. Tower crane lifting allows modern construction companies to hoist loads of tens of thousands of tons with high-tech boom arms giving almost as much manoeuvrability as strength.
Tower crane lifting facilitates the quick and safe erection of blocks of flats, offices, stadia and municipal buildings. Where construction projects used to take years or even decades, tower crane lifting shrank realistic deadline times down to a few months at most. The result: rapidly-growing skylines, crowded streets, and an environment in which construction itself became perversely difficult.
What happened was this. Tower crane lifting, which gave construction companies the ability to quickly forest downtown areas with skyscrapers, hotels, industrial complexes and sports stadia, had suddenly made those downtown areas difficult places in which to build anything new. Construction generally requires space: the speed with which tower crane lifting allowed city areas to go up meant that the new technology, supposed to make things easier for the builders, suddenly cut them out of their own territory. Lots of buildings, facilitated by tower crane lifting, choked off the space construction companies needed in order to carry on building.
Cue, then, the modern tower crane. Modern tower cranes, unlike their counterparts of even 10 years ago, can be erected in tiny spaces. Often, modern tower cranes are mounted on trucks: telescopic affairs that self assemble in situ, as they are needed. These modern units have all the tower crane lifting ability of the old gear, without any of their drawbacks they dont need to be assembled in a huge area; they dont have to be tended by a team of onsite engineers; and they only need be in place at all while they are actually being used.
Thats tower crane lifting for the 21st century nimble, manoeuvrable but still seriously heavy duty. Modern tower crane lifting like this can be done even in the smallest of downtown streets. Begging the question what next? Will the construction companies build themselves into a corner again or will modern tower crane lifting allow them to be more and more creative with less and less space?
