If a factory's conveying system cannot meet the work needs, professional crane suppliers will provide reasonable solutions. As a Chinese crane supplier that has provided overhead cranes to the world for 30 years, Dongqi Crane has experience in crane service in multiple professional industries. The case shared by Dongqi Crane today is a smelting factory customizing a bridge crane to meet the needs of handling materials such as cobalt, nickel, zinc and copper.

Metallurgical factories use bridge cranes to move materials

Each crane comes with a container revolver hoist, one 8.0m3 grab hoist, and one monorail, with respective capacities of 65 tons, 35 tons and 10 tons. bNth perform exactly the same functions. The bridges span 32m and have a lifting height of 15m, and have a FEM duty rating of 5m, the highest, meaning the cranes are designed to operate to work in heavy-duty conditions for long periods.

Trains carry the remains of preliminary copper production in closed-top containers to the facility. The cranes handle materials containing cobalt, nickel, zinc and copper for further processing and purification.

Prior to implementing the new set-up, the customer used a conventional bulk transit system to transport material. The system, consisting of a rotating frame with open-top containers mounted on a hopper, was fed to a conveyor belt by a reach stacker. This system was said to be temporary, slow and inefficient.

Crane supplier says that following an increase in demand, the metallurgy plant had to consider another form of transport and equipment.

The customer wanted a solution that was reliable, quick to install and cost-effective, could be integrated into existing transport processes, had minimal environmental impact and had zero commodity loss when handled. It also had to achieve higher speeds and very limited downtimes. The customer selected BVS Cranes, due to “its proven past track record in similar applications in the copper, gold, aluminium and steel industries not only in Europe but also in Central Asia, Africa and Australia”.

Since the installation, cycle times have dropped from 15-20 minutes with the original system to less than three minutes today, according to the plant’s engineering team.

Supply of overhead cranes to metallurgical plants