Crane revolutionises stockyard handling

A new design of crane from Street Crane Company has been commissioned by Ireland’s Heiton Steels, the largest Irish owned steel stockholder. This is the seventh crane from Street to be installed by Heiton. The Goliath design allows efficient loading and inloading.

Designed to handle eight tones safe working load and with a nine metre lift height, the single girder crane is of a cantilever construction. Spanning 21.2m between the rails, the main beam is offset from the support frames and has a cantilevered hoist to keep loads clear of the support legs. The main beam projects five metres and seven metres beyond the track edge, permitting unimpeded loading and unloading of trucks on either side. The design also enables the whole of the area between the tracks to be used for storage because access roadways within the tracks are not required.

The crane will be used to handle universal steel beams and shares the stockyard with an overhead traveling crane. As the paths for these crane cross, Street has engineered multi-level safety systems into the project. A sophisticated anti-collision system recognizes when either crane enters the critical area where their paths cross and prevents the other crane entering this zone.

Radio control of crane movements allows the operator to select a safe position with good visibility from which to control operations. Floodlights improve visibility in the darker months. Audible alarms warn of the cranes advance while emergency stops allow the operators to bring the cranes to a quick and safe standstill.

To assist productivity, the new crane has travel speeds of 80m/min in long travel, 30m/min in cross travel and a lift speed of eight metres per minute. A frequency inverter moderates all movements for smooth acceleration and deceleration and to assist load stability.

The crane is fitted with Street/s VX4 twinscrolling open-barrel hoist. This gives an accurate vertical lift and placement to protect the product from damage by scraping. It also helps to prolong the hoist and crane life by avoiding any pull to one side.

Commenting on the installation, Heiton’s managing director, John McGeever said, In the final analysis,” Street won the order because they understood our needs and came up with an innovative design that meets them most accurately.”

V. Practical assignments for independent work

Translate the following texts and give your own translator’s decisions

Text 1 the main types of modern lathes

The Automatic Lathe is so designed that all of the tool move­ments are automatically controlled, although the work must be in­serted and removed by an attendant.

Turret Lathe. — The characteristic feature of a turret lathe is the turret which is mounted upon a carriage and contains the tools "which are successively brought into the working position by index­ing or rotating the turret. Many turret lathes also have systems of stops or gauges for controlling the travel of the turret carriage and cross-slide, in order to regulate the depth of a bored hole, the length of a cylindrical part or its diameter.

Automatic Screw Machine. — The original field of the automatic screw machine was the making of screws. This field was quickly enlarged to include the making of all kinds of small nuts, washers, pins, collars, etc., and, at the present time, machines of this class are capable of a great variety of operations. Characteristic features -of screw machines in general are means for automatically locating successive tools in the correct working position, the automatic chang­ing of feeds and speeds and the presenting of new stock to the fools for a similar series of operations. These various movements, which are entirely automatic, are obtained principally from cams which are rotated at predetermined speeds. There are two general classes of screw machines: a single work-spindle and several work-spindles — usually four, five or six spindles.