An order for four cranes was recently filled by FL Smidth’s (FLS’s) sub-Saharan and West Africa procurement service.

Three of the cranes were delivered to Accra, Ghana where they will be used for maintenance in a company workshop. The cranes will run on end-carriages customised with spaced nylon-treaded wheels to meet an FLS stipulation that floor loading at the workshop not exceed 5 000 kg.

One of the cranes is a 10-t Condra portal crane decommissioned by FLS in Mozambique and the other two machines are new and of similar design and capacity, recently completed by Condra Cranes in Johannesburg.

In addition, Condra has shipped two portal cranes of 15‑t capacity to FLS Saudi Arabia.

FLS requested maximum floorspace and lifting height within the constraints of the Accra workshop building. To achieve this, Condra used short headroom (SH) hoists from its Titan range, then mounted geared drives vertically on the end-carriages to achieve a floorspace saving of about half that required by conventional mounts.

Other features include digital loadcell hoist readouts, variable-speed drives on the long-travels, and pendant backup for hand-held remote-control units.

The two 15-t portal cranes for Saudi Arabia have a general configuration similar to the Ghanaian cranes but will run on conventional steel wheels and rails.

The tight constraints imposed by limited workshop space on crane installation meant that box girders,15-t hoists, girder legs and end-carriages all had to be designed to be capable of assembly and installation within a vertical plane measuring just 8.3 m across by 5.4 m high. SH hoists from the Titan range helped meet this challenge.

Condra explains that its Titan SH hoists are designed to make maximum use of factory space – headroom as well as floor – reducing the size of many constituent parts to take height out of the final crane assembly. They incorporate features such as automatic rope tensioning, smoother travel, built-in load limiter, standardised direct drive and universal carriage.