Große Turmdrehkrane

[djlivus 0]

Super Size me. Article from july 2006, Cranes Today magazine. By Mr. Stuart Anderson and Heinz Gert Kessel. Nowadays this article is deleted from Cranes Today.

The era of the super-sized tower crane effectively began some thirty years ago as crane manufacturers responded to the evolving demands of the nuclear power plant building programmes of Europe, the Soviet Union and the USA. Demand was also driven by the needs of the offshore oil and gas exploration industry, and the ever-growing requirements of builders of super tankers in northern Europe and Japan. Chernobyl's nuclear disaster in 1986 finished off the nuclear ambitions of most countries and with it much of the demand for super-heavy tower cranes. Meanwhile ship building largely completed its move eastwards.

Some of the best-known tower cranes ever built were the eight Favelle Favco STD 2700s shipped from Sydney, New South Wales to New York City in 1968 to build the 1,350ft (412m) World Trade Towers. Though not of immense lifting capacities, the combination of height and hoist speed of these big diesel-hydraulic luffers made the world sit up and take notice. FMC's TG series, introduced in the mid-70s to compete with the Favco cranes, had a capacity of 40t at 30m radius. Nearly 60 units were built by Link-Belt and its successor Cornell. The 1900 and 2300B became standard tower cranes for ultra-high rise projects in the USA.

Two northern European manufacturers, Norddeutschen Schraubenwerke GmbH and F.B. Kroll A/S, pioneered the development of super-capacity tower cranes of 1,000 tonne-metres ™ capacity. Over the course of more than twenty years the Peiner cranes produced by Norddeutschen had achieved an enviable reputation with more than 7,000 in service by the mid-1970s. Toward the end of 1974, Peiner had sold the world's largest self-travelling tower crane to Servix Engenharia of Sao Paulo, Brazil. That crane, designed against the needs of a hydro-electric dam project, combined a maximum under hook height of 125m (410ft) and a maximum operating radius of 62m (203ft).

In 1975 Peiner responded to the individual needs of the Finnish shipbuilder Rauma Repola and of a Swiss nuclear power plant project with two very different cranes. Peiner's answers were the M 1300 luffing boom tower and the M 1250 saddle jib tower crane respectively. Before shipment to Switzerland, Peiner exhibited the massive M 1250 at the 1975 Hanover Fair. The giant crane stunned visitors with its hook heights of over 100m (330ft).

Peiner competed with the adventurous Dane Fritjof Berg Kroll. Based in the small town of Lynge just north of Copenhagen, Kroll had started his business in 1956, strange as it may seem today, as a manufacturing licensee of Linden Tower Cranes, which were being built in nearby Sweden. By 1961 Kroll's arrangement with Linden had ceased and he began to design and build his own cranes. In 1975, he had not only built one of the largest tower cranes the world had ever seen in the shape of the 1,800tm K-1800 but also released design plans for a 10,000tm crane that dwarfed everything that anyone else had even dreamt of.

As if to add insult to injury, Kroll sold the first two of the massive K-1800 saddle-jib cranes in Linden's backyard to Kockum Shipyards in Sweden. The following year he sold a third K-1800 to a blue-chip US contractor, Daniel International Corporation, for use in nuclear power plant construction. Other US customers followed suit. A 3,000tm capacity K-3000 was acquired by Duke Power in North Carolina. In 1977, Kroll shipped the first of his gigantic K-10000 saddle-jib cranes to General Public Utilities Corp., to build the Seabrook nuclear power plant in New Hampshire. A second K-10000 soon also crossed the Atlantic, joining the rental fleet of Tower Cranes of America Inc. In 1979, Kroll sold a K-10000 to the Ministry of Energy in the Soviet Union.

With a maximum lifting capacity of 120t at 82m, the bottom-slewing K-10000 was, and still is, unique. With the success of the K-10000, Kroll actually designed - but never built - an even larger crane, the 25,000tm capacity model K-25000 capable of lifting 200t (220 US tons) to 88m (288ft) radius and 400t (440 US tons) to 57m (187ft).

In 1973, Babcock Richier claimed to have sold more big cranes than anyone else and was particularly successful in the French shipyards. In 1972-3 Babcock Richier sold eight of its big saddlejib cranes rated 62.5t at 9.5m radius and with 7.2t at 60m radius to French shipyards. In the following year, the firm made big inroads into the UK Ministry of Defence at Chatham and on the rig building sites of Scotland.

In 1974, Liebherr (Ireland) Ltd., based in Killarney, built the group's largest tower crane to date. The A 750C, built for the US's largets public utility firm, the Tennessee Valley Authority, boasted a free-standing height of 76m (249ft) with a capacity of 6t at 75m (246ft) maximum radius. It shipped to the US in January 1975.


When it was built on a 20-acre site in 1959, the Killarney facility was Liebherr's first overseas plant and amongst its early leaders were Freddy Bar and Heinz Schiller, as cost accountant and technical director respectively. Killarney started building tower cranes, before container cranes were added in 1967. Being close to the port and therefore offering important shipping cost and logistic benefits over Biberach in Germany, it remained the manufacturing site for Liebherr's largest tower cranes for many years, even though the A 750C was designed in Germany.

Nuclear power plant construction was taking off all around the world, providing work for super-size tower cranes and crawler cranes alike. East of the Iron Curtain, tower cranes were often preferred and Peiner was still finding success with its ever-bigger luffers. In 1977, Peiner sold four of its 1,300tm capacity VM 1300s in Eastern Europe with two going to Poland, one to Czechoslovakia and one to Romania.

The Soviet Union's BK-1000 railgoing climbing crane with 63t lifting capacity and the CKP range of railgoing self raising tower cranes with up to 160t capacity were intensively used at large nuclear and thermical power station projects.

Recognising the trend and lured by the high dollar values, other manufacturers joined the fray. In 1978 Linden-Alimak won a hotly-contested order for six super size cranes from Bumar in Poland. Linden developed specially-strengthened versions of its 8000 Series crane to provide capacities of 50t at 17.6m radius. The Linden-Alimak 8000 Series had originally been introduced in 1975 soon after the merger of the Swedish tower crane and personnel hoist makers. Linden-Alimak strongly promoted the 8000 for its ability to operate in winds of up to 90 km/hr (55mph) instead of the norm of about 45-60 km/hr (30-40 mph), due to its jib and mast designs.

After several years of recession in its mainstream home market, Potain also reacted, developing the MD 1000 of 1,000tm capacity. The French crane offered 140m (460ft) free-standing hook height, a maximum lift capacity of 80t (88 US tons) at 20m (66ft) radius and 12.5t (13.8 US tons) capacity at 70m (230ft) radius. It won orders for two from Czechoslovakia and another from the Soviet Union. Increasingly the trend was towards large saddle-jib rather luffing boom towers.

By the time of the notorious meltdown at Three Mile Island nuclear plant in March 1979, the USA had already begun to move away from nuclear power. A re-assessment of the nation's power needs in the wake of the first Middle East oil price shock of 1973 had brought about the cancellation of some 40 planned nuclear plants. Of the 129 nuclear plants planned in the US at the time of Three Mile Island, just 53 of those not already operating would be completed. In total 51 nuclear reactors were cancelled between 1980 and 1984.

The accident did not dim the rest of the world's enthusiasm for nuclear power. In 1985, Potain won an order for 12 large cranes from the UK's Balfour Beatty and AMEC to build the expansive Sellafield nuclear plant.

Although markets went into recession in the 1980s, shipbuilders like Daewoo and Hyundai of South Korea, and Kockums of Sweden, provided welcome relief for big tower crane manufacturers. Despite the warning of Three Mile Island, most nations ploughed ahead with their nuclear power programmes.

Nuclear fallout

Then, on 26 April 1986, came Chernobyl. At the time of the accident, the Soviet Ministry of Energy had no less than 12 Kroll K-10000s on order, having purchased six in 1985, and then doubled the order. Despite the dire circumstances, the order was maintained and the last of these was delivered in the autumn of 1988. Most were never used. The timing was also bad for Liebherr who introduced its largest ever tower crane, the 3150 HC top-slewing saddle jib climbing crane in 1986.

Still, Eastern Europeans continued to build nuclear power stations. In 1987 a Czech company ordered nine large Potain MD 500 and two MD 8520s for power plant and dam construction. In February 1988 Machinoimport of the USSR placed an order for an MD 2200, the largest crane ever built by Potain--two of which had previously been supplied to East Germany. The 80m-jib saddle-jib crane, which had a dead weight of 516t without ballast, was valued at FFr 27m (then about $4.3m) and shipped in September.

For the next ten years, demand for these giant tower cranes faded. The leading Japanese manufacturer, IHI, entered the 'big league' in 1991, building Japan's largest tower crane, the 1,500tm load-moment JCC-1500H. Designed to Japan's exacting earthquake resistance standards, the luffer was designed to build the Minato Mirai 21 complex in Tokyo. But for the main part, business was confined to isolated industrial and power plant applications.

The drought ended in the late 1990s as China's Three Gorges Dam project saw orders placed for two Potain MD 2200s and a Kroll K-1800. Now equipped with the Nippon Conveyor Topbelt concrete conveying system, the big Potain and Kroll tower cranes demonstrated their capacity to pour serious amounts of concrete. At their peak the MD 2200s were pouring 450,000 cu m per month.

Recovering US market demand was signalled as rental companies began to acquire big towers. In 1999, Jake's Crane & Rigging of Las Vegas displayed a new Potain MD 2200 at ConExpo. In 2000, Tower Cranes of America purchased a new Kroll K-1800. In the same year, Van Seumeren (now Mammoet) acquired one of the old, unused Kroll K-10000s from Russia, refurbished it and put it to work in Southern Illinois. Shipbuilding was strong too as between, 2000 and 2002, Daewoo Shipbuilding went on a buying spree, acquiring no less than five giant Krolls including one 3,000tm, one 4,000tm and two 5,000tm machines.

But the real action remains in Asia and particularly China, where Potain continues to take the lion's share. Success in 2003 with twin MD 2200s for dam construction with Vietnam's largest contractor, Song Da Construction, led to orders for four MD 900Bs from the same customer the following year. Meanwhile the Longtan Dam in Guanxi Province, China, saw MD 1800s and MD 2200s combine in further massive concrete pouring operations, capped only by the two huge MD 3600s now building the spectacular Sutong bridge.


Selected huge tower cranes

Model Type Year Max. Load at maximum Hook
load radius height

Peiner M 1250 saddle-jib 1975 63t to 13.2t (14.5 US 100m
25m tons) to 81m (330ft)
(313ft)

Kroll K-10000 saddle-jib 1977 240t to 120t (132 US 86m
44m tons) to 82m (280ft)
(267ft); later
94t (104 US tons)
at 100m (320ft)

Linden-Alimak saddle-jib 1978 50t at 16.7t to 46m 139m
custom 8000 17.6m
series

Potain MD saddle-jib 1988 50t to 24t at 80m
2200 41.7m

Potain MD saddle-jib 2003 80t to 30t to 48m 306m
3600 28m bearbeitet 3. Februar 2011 von djlivus

[Marc67o 4]

Hallo zusammen,
ich würde gerne mal solche Riesen von Turmdrehkranen mal aus der nähe sehen , und natürlich mal hinaufsteigen. Leider hat es bei uns in der Schweiz nicht solche Maschinen.

gruss vom Bodensee

[djlivus 0]

Peiner MK900.

[djlivus 0]

mk-1250. Peiner. According to a Peiner AG document from 80s, Peiner could make on request towers cranes up to 20.000 tm. But I don't have more information about that, unfortunately.

[djlivus 0]

http://www.pixagogo.com/7777274235

A site with many photos of Potain MD900 montage