allright, i 'll admit it. i am terrified of hights. real scared. squeal like a little girl scared. i have oiled on tower cranes back in my apprentice days, when i couldn't turn it down, but i rarely accept the invites all my tower crane buddies give me because i hate the darn cranes. that being said, i got a call from my tower buddy mike that i had to respond to because it gave me a chance to post some great pics for all my good friends on hef. so i want you all to know the fear i went through just for you guys to get these snaps. enjoy YOU DIDN'T THINK I WOULD REALLY CLIMB ONE OF THOSE THINGS, DID YOU?
LOL, i noticed that it didnt see so high up, you are a many funny guy. nice looking crane though!
i am glad you liked it and wished you could have been there.
LMAO good one Qball...I looked at the first one and thought *** there is no height...Is that a Potain cab and slew gear?...
yep, it's a pootietang luffer. not much holding the cabs on those things, in my opinion.
LOL, come on up to Vic and climb mine...FM GRU's are similar in terms of how the cab is fastened on, I shaked my head everyday on how I manage to keep my ever growing arse up here lol
thanks, when you get it on the ground, i would love to visit.
Ha Ha :laugh I was trying to figure out why the anemometer was on the seat. On a Terex, two bolts hold the cab on.
Well it looks like we found Q's weakness. Our solution to his forum bashing is to threaten him with a tower crane.
haha good stuff qball
Hi All, old operator new member :usa Hi everybody, I'm new here. I just thought I'd ask, Do any of you have any seat time in the HDT 80 self erecting tower crane? I've been running all kinds of cranes for 30 years and now I'm looking at buying one of these cranes. If you have any experience with these crane please reply. :drinkup
Aw C'mon! Qball, can't be that bad. I know a woman that has been operating towers for years.
Those taken at All Crane Rental in Columbus, OH or else where?
nope, centrals yard in hammond, in.
I have some time at the controls of a potain Igo 85. I didnt have a cab on it only the radio remotes. used it to set structural steel and trusses on a 4 story mixed use structure with a 3 level under ground parking garage. IT paid for itself on that one job in the time saved. On this particular site their was ZERO lay down and the city would only allow us one lane on one side of the building to unload trucks and set the crane up for the duration of the project. IF you have the work for it and can swing the cost then by all means their a handy unit. The sweetest setup i seen was a self erecting tower mounted on a 3 axle truck chassis. the portability and the area under hook make them a damn impressive unit.
Hi Dualie, I want one of the Potain HDT80's. I always loved running the towers but my knees can't take the climb. This machine,....... you ride up. I can stand that. They build alot of little 3 story office buildings around here and I know alot of the contractors and they all say that could save them alot on equipment rental. It's a small machine with a great radius, you could cover the whole site of one of these buildings I'm talking about. Knock it out, break down, and get gone to the next one.
That is my FAVORITE way to see a tower! I'm not afraid of heights but I sure don't like the way they feel. Just means "job security" for my union brothers that do!
question for tower crane guys IM A DOWN SOUTH DIRT GUY NEEDING SOME INFO,WHATS THE TALLEST TOWER CRANE EVER?:notworthy
That's funny right there! I'm not too fraidy cat of heights, but the idea of a tower crane makes me queezy. That's as close as I think I'd like to get.
Are you referring to free-standing, tied in or just higher ever on a building. If its the latter you'd be looking at the TC on the Burj Dubai...if you're talking freestanding, you'd be looking at somewhere in the 300 ft range, depending on make and model...
Oh come on guys! its not that big of a deal! - A solid steel structure, that if properly maintained, operated and inspected is perfectly safe! Sure we rock around a little from time to time up here, but hell its part of the rush, the charm, and the down and dirty fun of the job! - I had the same feelings as ya'll did, I was the equipment op on a highrise site (running all the mini-hoes, bobcats, telehandlers etc and I was dared by our Carpenter Lead Hand to climb up the crane the day it was erected, after all the guys had gone home, I did...they just about had to call the Fire Rescue to haul me out, completely froze up, white knuckled on the controls, now!? I look forward to Monday morning, and every morning I wake up and make that climb to my own private little fifedom high above the city! Its not hallllf has bad as it seems when you get over the mental blocks!
It's not so bad up there. You're rarely more than a few feet from the floor of the catwalk, cab, or on a ladder with an outer cage around it. The tower section ladders now also go up at an angle, instead of straight up all the way to the slewing ring. Back in the day you could actually fall all the way to the ground thru the ladder path. Once you bond with the rockin' and rolling, torque and swaying it's a hoot to run!
This will give you some more views from the top. I love the advantages of the tower crane's higher cab perspective, and all the inherent t/c safety feratures that make them much more operator and customer friendly cranes. It's the best way to do crane work IMO! http://s1029.photobucket.com/albums/y355/gostr8r/My Crane Rental Corp projects/#!cpZZ7QQtppZZ16
I have a little bit on ours. We used ours a lot before the economy went south. I was never assigned to it but filled in here and there, and used it to get my T/C Examiners Cert. Personally I don't like it AT ALL! From an operator's stand point it's not as friendly as you might think. The swing will just coast if you try to counter swing it:Banghead, and counter swinging is needed in some situations. You have to gently slow down by only giving enough swing command to reach your target area and hope it comes to a stop. If something unforeseen happens and you have to stop much sooner, tooooo bad you can't. It's **** in the wind too. I did like the elevator feature tho and the wireless remote control box that was good for about 300'. You can walk around on the roof and still operate it. The rig was so quiet I couldn't hear and couldn't feel the trolley either, and I like to know when the drum is moving. There's no detents in the levers and you take the remote control box up with you in the cab. If that goes dead you better have a spare battery on the charger or you'll be stuck with a load and the cab in the air. On a couple jobs I did, if I left the cab all the way to the bottom at the end of the day, the long and loose power chord running back up the mast could and did [once] get caught on the building structure [in a super tight spot] while it weather vaned at night. Plus it can only swing about 2 revolutions in a 360 before it hits a mechanical stop, then you have to go back the other way. That means you need to be aware of whether or not you're centered on the total swing range or it might not go int the direction you want it too. The cab is super small and has no A/C. Those are just a few of my cons and it's just one man's opinion. http://s1029.photobucket.com/albums...orp projects/?action=view¤t=potain1.jpg
Hi everybody! I'm a new member. I had a chance to operate Potain MD2200. It's great! Big tower crane with long jib. See my crane: http://i245.photobucket.com/albums/gg76/bluenight_lhh/Potain%20Alimak/TaycanMD2200_GF.jpg
Hdt80 ? As I stated before, we have one in our fleet, and I have had the lousy experience of having to fill in on it in some very tight spots! That's what they're famous for tho, is being able to be set up with a smaller footprint and then have the operator use his wireless remote controls to run it as he walked around on the deck or on the ground [as far away as 300'], either one. It has an elevator cab [that goes to any height along it's mast] and it's smaller than a porta-potty. No room for a big guy in there at all if he wanted to take the remote up to run it from the air. And the remotes are notorious for going dead at the worst time possible too! Better have a fully charged back up battery for it. I also didn't like the super quiet motors on the hoist, swing and trolley because that made me look away from the hook to see if the functions were responding to my handle commands. That's no way to run a crane. In some really spots if you leave the cab at the bottom of the mast the power chord [coming down from the hoist and trolley motors] would get caught on something on the structure when it weather vaned at night. I also didn't like the fact that the swing has a limited rotation of less than two 360 degree revolutions in either direction. If you reached that limit you could only go back around the other way. So much for a true weather vaning rig:Banghead. Another complaint was the swing can't be counter rotated to slow or stop the slewing. It has to just coast to a stop, or almost to one, then you can use the swing brake. How many times as operators do we need to bring our swing motion to a quicker stop than we originally needed to when we hit the swing to go from A to B? Anything can happen [and does too] to change the lift idea we had from that first motion along the way. Some other crane can enter your area, a worker not paying attention can step in the path of the moving load, wind effects, or the most likely is that the guy that is wanting the load changes his mind and wants it else where than where you were being directed to go. That, and many other possibilities, make the swing function alone the MOST aggravating thing about the HDT 80 for me personally. Our's didn't come with a fan, a/c or a heater either, not that there would have been room for it any way. It's pro's are that it's self erecting, small and fast, and an exceptional operator, like our own James Chamberlain could make it look easy but HE was exceptional, not the crane! I hope to never spend another shift on it tho. Hope this sheds some light on your choice Longboom.