RAILHEAD CHAINING AND SPANNING TOOLS DRIVER

RAILHEAD CHAINING AND SPANNING TOOLS DRIVER

The “basic” idea behind tapered wheels is that when the crane skews, the trailing drive wheel moves to the larger diameter of the tapered tread and catches up with the smaller diameter of the driver wheel on the leading wheel. The concept and new operation of tapered wheels is good but old. So what happened? For the purpose of this Blog post I will refrain from going into too much detail.

Also note that the inside flange of the wheel has been engaging the inside rail head causing wear to both. The picture shows the top of the rail head with wear to the inside of the span due to a life time of tapered wheels.

The large diameter of the taper always goes to the inside of a crane span, but as you can see the wheel tread is worn flat. What you are looking at is a tapered wheel in the above photograph. Looking at the wheels and rail you could easily see there was damage to the wheels and the rail due to tracking. The crane operates most of the time within a 100’ section of a 400’ long runway. This particular application is a low capacity (under 30 ton) crane, top running, double girder, under 60’ span that predominately is used in shipping loads approaching the rated capacity of the crane on a regular basis. So off into the manlift and up onto the crane I went to see what was going on.

The user complained about “racking” of the crane and was looking for some answers and solutions. Recently I had a chance to work with some top running cranes that had real problems with the wheels and rail. Sometimes I forget and take for granted that some knowledge in our industry is commonly known.

Railhead chaining and spanning tools