subject: Overhead Crane: An Overview [print this page] Cranes are the handling equipment that are used for lifting heavy loads and moving them from one place to another. Cranes are used in various industries for different purposes. There are many types crane, each of which has different and capacity and uses. There are mainly three types of cranes: overhead crane, mobile crane and stationary crane. Some cranes are used in industries, some in construction and some in ports for the loading and unloading of heavy materials.
Industrial overhead cranes are also known as bridge cranes. The overhead crane is usually traverse a horizontal path within the building and use a hoist to handle or lift objects. The overhead crane have three major components: bridge, runway and hoist.
The runways are long parallel beams. These beams are generally attached to the walls of the building. The two ends of the bridge is connected to these runways and bridge travels on this. For handling the heavy loads, the runways are connected to the wall structure for safety purpose.
The bridge is a horizontal beam, which is positioned along with the path or the runways where the load needs to be moved. The bridge connects the two parallel runways and travels on them to move the load. It can be consist of either one or two beams. For handling light weight loads, single beam design is used. For heavy loads like 8 tons or more double beam design is used.
The hoist is the third main component of the overhead crane. The hoist is a hook like structure which runs along the length of the equipment. The load is hoisted with it and then the load is moved to the destination and then the load is carefully dropped.
The overhead crane is very useful in beg industrial buildings. Using overhead crane heavy loads can be moved from one section of the building to another without putting many human efforts. The overhead cranes are very important in the material handling operations. The use of overhead crane is very common in steel manufacturing and automobile industries. In these industries, steel and raw materials used in manufacturing, are very heavy, which is not easy to handle without the help of any material handling equipment.
These important parts of the machine are essential in the maintenance of the businesses like paper mills, where the required supplies are very heavy and needs to be moved frequently. Many industries require such material handling equipment, so they buy their own to save the operating and manufacturing cost of the goods and materials.
