Steel handling with standard modular range of products

Customer

At its Walsall (UK) and Jebel Ali (Dubai) locations, Promat BD develops and manufactures forged flanges and special fittings for the onshore and offshore oil and gas industries, as well as for the energy industry. These components, which feature nominal sizes of up to 48", must meet extremely strict requirements concerning material quality, leak tightness, corrosion protection, and service life. Promat BD enjoys an outstanding reputation in this demanding market and, in addition to a broad range of standard products, manufactures numerous custom-made products that are used worldwide.

Requirement

Producing large and accordingly heavy pipeline components involves a large number of process steps and just as many transport steps. Several Demag pillar-mounted slewing cranes were acquired for this job at the Dubai location all the way back in 2014.

With production operations set to be expanded with one additional production line, the company looked for a handling solution that would be able to take care of a series of tasks. One example is at the beginning of the process chain, where steel plates with thicknesses of 5 to 200 mm must be fed to a waterjet cutting / plasma cutting machine. The cut elements are then stored temporarily. As soon as there is a machining job, the cut plate elements – which can be quite heavy – are transported to various areas in the new manufacturing shop, e.g. for welding, machining, and painting.

Solution

The company’s good experiences with its existing (slewing) cranes and the advice provided by Demag experts on site led Promat BD to work with Demag once again for this project.

The solution designed and installed on-site by the Demag engineers features an overhead travelling crane with a load capacity of 10 tonnes from Demag’s standard modular range of products. The corresponding girder completely spans the 20-meter width of the bay.

On the ground, each of the five working areas is equipped with a slewing crane that has been custom-configured for the corresponding task. The corresponding load capacities (one to two tonnes) are different from each other, as are the jib lengths and slewing ranges (0 to 360°). A two-tonne slewing crane is installed at the end of the process chain, in the packing area.

The slewing cranes make ergonomic work and flexible and gentle handling possible. They make it easy to work on all sides of the pipeline components, which can weigh up to two tonnes. The cranes are controlled with a cable-connected DSC-7 controller, which enables operators to control all movements of the jib trolley and hoist movements with outstanding precision. The pendant controller fits well in the user’s hand and allows both left and right-handed operators to control the hoist safely, reliably, and intuitively, both with and without gloves.

Special features

The crane setup designed for Promat BD shows that Demag’s standard range of products can be used to configure custom transport and handling solutions. The overhead travelling crane was configured from the modular system from the EKKE range. And even though all five slewing cranes are different from each other, they are standard products that are used constantly day after day.