Date: 08/17/2020
Previous Blog: How to Maximize Your Hoist Investment
Your facility prioritizes a safe, efficient working environment—your crane operators are properly trained, and you regularly inspect your equipment. Your workflow leaves plenty of time to safely execute each lift and suspended loads are never unattended.
What can you do to further improve your crane operators’ safety? Here are some common safety hazards and crane features that can counter them.
Common Safety Hazards and How to Prevent Them
Across the industries we work with, the hazards of crane operation are often tied to three categories:
• Equipment failure
• Load control
• Workplace ergonomics
The first is equipment failure, which can cause a load to fall or move unexpectedly. Any unexpected movement is dangerous to employees. The second is load control. When a load is out of control, its swinging movement can cause injury or damage equipment in the facility. Finally, employee safety and health can be impacted by the ergonomics of the equipment they operate. We use hoists and cranes so that people won’t have to continually lift small capacity loads themselves. Those repeated small motions can have long-term impacts on a person’s health. Even using a non-ergonomic controller can cause damage to a person’s hands and arms over time.
Standard Safety Features
Our equipment is engineered with a 5:1 factor of safety. This intentional, mechanical design prevents equipment failure. All of our hoists have an overload device that works with a condition monitoring device, such as the HoistMonitor, to tell how much weight is on the equipment. When that weight exceeds 115-120% of the rated capacity, the hoist overload will engage and will only allow the load to be lowered safely to the ground.
Where applicable, additional safety features that help operators maintain load control include load summation, slack rope supervision, wear item replacement notifications and the invertor-driven trolley and bridge control.
Load summation is available to monitor multiple hoists on the same crane. Each load’s monitor communicates the weight being lifted to the other hoists and works as a complete system to avoid overloading beyond the rated capacity of the complete crane.
Slack rope supervision is another available feature that can be turned on to prevent potential snapping or shock loading.
Items that undergo continued use and wear must be monitored for timely replacement. For example, a brake is a safety item that can become a hazard if it is overused. Our standard service warnings, given by the HoistMonitor, ensure continued safe operation by indicating that key wear items are ready to be replaced.
Another standard feature is inverter-driven trolley and bridge control. To avoid potential hazards that occur because of loads swaying, the inverter (also called a variable-frequency drive) slowly ramps the trolley and bridge motions up and down. This reduces the pendulum of the load’s swing.
The long-term effects of crane operation can’t be overlooked. Our PRQ pendant controller is an example of an ergonomic design product. Light-weight design and ease of use help reduce hand fatigue for operators who use the controller daily.
Specialty Features
In addition to the safety features built into cranes, there are many add-on safety features that can help you elevate crane operator safety.
One ergonomically-designed feature is the hook latch trigger. With this device, the person loading a hook has a much lower risk of pinched fingers or dropped slings or shackles. When an operator has a large below the hook device that requires repetitive loading and unloading, it can cause strain over time. The hook latch trigger can ease that strain by ensuring a smooth loading process.
Another specialty feature is the anti-sway control system, which uses the HoistMonitor technology coupled with our inverter-controlled trolley or bridge to prevent a swaying motion of the load as it is being moved in the trolley or bridge motions. It balances the pendulum of load swing by moving forward, backward, or adjusting the speed of the trolley or bridge motions to counteract the load’s swaying movement automatically. Rather than operators plugging or jogging the crane to achieve a similar effect, anti-sway controls anticipate and react to the motions with better precision. Sway control is used when lifting very delicate, unusually shaped or expensive loads (large sheets of glass or expensive aerospace parts, for example).
In industries such as metal working industry and automotive, there is a specialized need to control molds or products when they are being flipped. Load-turning applications present more opportunities for operators to lose control of the load, creating a dangerous situation. Our special load-turning features offer solutions to create safer environments for operators, reduces the number of workers needed to turn a load and increases productivity at the same time.
Incremental Changes That Set You Apart
Safety improvement don’t always have to be made in one fell swoop. Near the end of your equipment’s lifecycle, find safety-forward replacement options. For example, change out your controllers to all-ergonomic models during your next purchase. You should also move toward standardization and streamlining equipment to give operators a more consistent operating experience.
There are safety benefits to having streamlined and uniformly-branded equipment across the facility. If one of your cranes has 2-speed controls and another uses inverter controls, consider switching all cranes to the same system. This way, your employees can operate any crane without the added complication of knowing different control types.
Putting Your People First
Your next crane can put your people at the forefront while saving you money on accident prevention, insurance and worker’s compensation costs, and downtime due to injury. Compliant with OSHA regulations, R&M’s equipment meets CMAA, ASME, CSA C/US and ANSI standards.
Are you looking for a quote for your next project? Contact us online or find a distributor near you.