Area that can be used more effectively thanks to an automatic crane, as its travel path is located under the hall roof. If loads are to be lifted over people or traffic routes at a later stage, this must be taken into account at the design stage in order to ensure safety in accordance with the regulations. These mainly relate to preventing the load from falling. But what happens if the load breaks?
It was precisely this safety risk that ALTMANN engineers addressed in an exciting project. Their requirement was to safeguard against a breakage of the carrier plate when transporting stacks of timber. The solution was to integrate movable crash bars into the automatic crane to prevent a broken carrier pallet from falling. The carrier pallet rests on swiveling forks mounted on the grab. Somewhat suspended from these are the crash bars, equipped with two degrees of freedom. Their movement in the direction of the crane runway is primarily intended, of course, to secure the carrier pallet during crane travel and to release it for deposit at the destination.
On this level, the distances between the crash bars can also be varied in order to better counteract any one-sided load distribution. To set down the carrier pallet, the crash bars must move parallel to the forks. For this purpose, they pull apart in a quasi telescopic manner. In the event of a break in the carrier plate, the resulting energies are elastically dissipated within the structure.
With this little bit of extra safety, ALTMANN has once again proven its motto "Vorsprung durch Innovation".
Figure: At the bottom right of the picture, a crash bar can be seen in the extended state. Below it are two of the forks on which the carrier plate rests during transport.
