Rumor on the street is manitowoc will be unveiling the replacement model for the 2250 which has been around since about 1997. About time, very primitive machinery setup on the machine, hasn't changed much since the M-250
In discussions revolving around the whole Lanning/Sany/ACE situation I've heard the same thing. A 300 ton replacement is coming and it may very likely have a variable counterweight system. To be honest, I'm surprised we haven't seen these systems sooner. You don't have to spend much time with cranes to know that the fixed counterweight moment is THE performance limiter. Structural and control system improvements are a distant second. While its not trivial, I'm surprised its 2014, robots are exploring Mars, and we've barely seen production-ready variable counterweight moment cranes. Just my $0.02
i am sure the liability issues are delaying implementation. the engineers come up with designs a long time before they can convince the lawyers that actually run the world, that the systems work.
I promise I hadn't seen this when I wrote that....haha. http://www.theconstructionindex.co....xtends-use-of-innovative-counterweight-system
whoever wrote the article got the colors mixed up of the new cranes, so much for accurate reporting!
American used the concept years ago on a crawler, however Facebook has a page called "Manitowoc crane enthusiasts". The new MLC cranes have been all over it, check it out, you'll be glad you did.