Sorry if it sounds like a crazy question ...lol... I am a model crane collector and if i drop a small nut into the winch area, I just turn the model over and most of the time it will just drop out. But what do you do on a real crane? and how do you keep that area around the winch clean? any worry about water collecting there and promote rust?
Define “small tool”
If you have one, you know it.....
On to the winch question, now that we've cleared up that confusion. The winches have drain holes in the bottom, so unless they fill up with trash (leaves, grease etc.) they won't hold water. I've dropped stuff down in them before when working, and usually you can take a piece of wire and work it out. If not, I have had to put in the block and run a bunch of stick out, and reel a bunch of the cable off so I could get down in there. There's a lot of room if there's no cable on the drum.
Much of the tooling used around these NOT SMALL by any sense of imagination!! Have dropped nuts or small parts into Winch Heads, and also managed to fish out the drain holes, not much to catch on inside the support ends.
That's why you have to leave your feelings in the truck-they'll get hurt out here! I bought a 4hp Johnson for a little boat I have and my "SO-called-friend"LOL saw it and looked at me funny. I said I guess now you'll be telling everybody I have a small Johnson. BIG grin on his face. I need new friends.
Almost as bad as a 'Buddy' talking about the Huge Johnson he drove down the lake!! That took a LONG time to wear off!!!!
What do I do, quite often I just have to forget about it. The logging machines I worked on it were just about impossible to retrieve something and if the lines were on the drum, forget it. I do have an extendable magnet that is really strong, wrap some black tape around the sides so it doesn't stick to everything and try to fish around. But usually all you get is a bunch of junk. I used to do lots of machine rebuilds, it was amazing the amount of tools you found once you took them all apart.
When I work over an similar area where things can fall and be hard to retrieve, I tie off a string or thin wire to the tool/object. It seems like a waste of time until something slips from your grip. Then your glad you did, because getting it back really slows to work.
I ran cheap tools, working in the elements can be hard on stuff, kept the good ones in the shop. Set of cheap china wrenches, need to bend one or loose one, can replace the whole set for less money then buying a single snapon. Honestly, are you going to spend a couple of hours dropping the belly pan on a D8 to rescue a 9/16 wrench or just go to the store and spend $13 bucks for a new one.
Some of this stuff has a LOT of glue on it.....it takes a long time to wear off. My daughter saw a coffee cup with POW/MIA on it. She was little and didn't know what it stood for. She read it like it looked-"POW"-a loud noise and "MIA"...a girl's name. What's "Pow Mia"?...THere's super glue on that one!
I worked at a tank shop and was helping to block off a 400 barrel for testing. It was standing vertical and we were on top bolting a cover on a flange. We went up in a 3 ton bucket truck that could only be operated from the truck. A wrench fell inside the tank and there was no one around to let us down to retrieve the wrench. The laborer I was working with was allowed to wear steel toed running shoes because work boots were too slippery on steel. He ran down the boom into the back of the truck. Got someone to lift him back up and said next time I had to do it. That was one of the scariest/stupid things I've ever seen! One slip and he would have been toast. Another guy was fired because he lifted someone up in the truck and started moving the boom in out to shake the bucket with the guy at full height.
You must have worked on those yarders with the skycars and all that stuff. Looks very labor intensive. Like a friction rig crawler crane. We have a lot of pile driving cranes down here and everything is heavy,rusty,seized up and a general pain in the rear.They work on the beaches of the Gulf of Mexico and I don't think that anything's been made that salt air and water don't eat up.
Lol. thanks for the entertaining answers. I guess i can make my models a little more realistic by taking a drill to the bottom of the model? I do notice that this area on an old used crane seems to be very dirty on a lot of the pictures. And yes, it would be a real PITA to have to unwind most of the ropes to get in there to retrieve things. even just unreeling all the "rope" on my model crane is tiresome for the fingers....lol... Not also to mention the fact that unwinding the "rope" on the model a lot of times causing the rope to jump off the pulleys....lolll..
Yup, when I first started my apprenticeship lots of our log loaders were modified cranes, did lots of work on Americans. All friction, all pains in the butt. Not too many worked in the salt air, thank goodness. Closest I go to something like that was working on the self loading logging barges. Rust, ugh...
Yes if you drop a wrench down in the belly pan or for that matter the VEE of some engines, just leave it there the next guy to do a major overhaul might just need that tool. I know I found a few over the years. Did I ever mention the large Snap-On screwdriver I found in the door of a Mack truck? That's the good news. The bad news is I had lost that screwdriver about a year before and had bought a new one in the mean time!
I'll tell you this, many a time I would have loved to have been able to pick a piece of equipment up, turn it over and shake the crap out of it. Mostly out of rage.
You need a tetanus shot before you work on it.
Now you have a spare
I found that a good shot of Tennessee whiskey after the night was over worked better
Talking about the guy running down the boom, I once saw a guy walk a 4" hawser from barge to tug! In the ocean! He was fired when we got back to the dock!
Have found enough odds and ends tools in Refers belly pans, old truck and tractor hidey holes to stock a house box for the little woman to destroy stuff with. Even found a 2 D Cell Maglight in the flywheel housing of a Mercedes engine in a Carrier Transicold unit, was not destroyed where sent it in for refurb, got a new one back FREE. Owner Operator thought engine was knocking, light was just moving around.
How were you planning on getting down when finished??
I dropped a 9/16" wrench in the frame rail of a Wabco scraper once while replacing a generator and could not retrieve it. Two years later I got to pull the transmission for a rebuild and remembered the wrench, with the trans out I could reach right in and grab it. Got it back just in time to replace it's replacement that I lost.
Someone was coming to let us down but no one was around when the wrench fell. I would have waited but the laborer was a little impatient. He didn't even wait 5 minutes to see if someone came outside.
I have rigged up some pretty unique magnet set ups over the years. If I can’t retrieve my wrench/socket/screwdriver/ratchet with any of my custom set ups.......I amazingly don’t need that tool any longer!
I worked on some old Detroits in boats with nasty bilges. I had plenty of 9/16 and 5/8 wrenches and sockets after you clean the bilge.
Today, with this metric ****, you'd probably have a lifetime supply of 15 and 18s.
Belts use pulleys. Cranes use sheaves.
What's worse is when the news says the flags are flying at half mast and they show a building. A mast is on a ship. It should be half staff unless it's on a ship.
The only bonus you got if you were the first one into the bilge of a dozer boat on an engine change was a few decent tools. Still didnt make up for the blackness. As for hiding things inside frames ect,we used to have a bucket of balls from a big rotec off a burnt grapple yarder . As devious shop guys we would throw a couple inside things we built out of hollow structural tubing. A push off frame for a 980 to dump logs was one that got the *** was that .
I don't care what anyone says, that is funny. Note to self, never get together with Tugger, we would make a bad team
Here's my cranes. A tadano atf400 and liebherr hs 855. a bolt has been dropped accidentally into the winch area by a worker. unfortunately the bolt is made of brass so that worker will now have to go down into there to get it as a magnet fishing line wont pick up a brass bolt....lol...
Oh the horror. Nice job on those models. So now just imagine, in real life. Me, 5'9", 200+ pounds of solid muscle (errrr, just a little white lie) having to squeeze my largeness down between those 2 drums, twist around a couple of shafts and work on the travel down drive on a mechanical machine. I'm referring to a Madill 044. Google one and look at the images. Just imagine me stuffed down in that hole for a few days and now you know why I refer to myself as the wornout wrench. Hey Donkey Doctor, if your out there care to confirm
Really long tweezers.
That Madill is smaller than the HS 855. not much room ;( lol.. that would translate into a tweezer at least several hundreds lb,,,,
Titanium. No one said it would be cheap.
I can Remember the old Friction Americans, Manis and Link Belts, working inside the house trying to retrieve lower drum drive parts? ALWAYS Middle of August and in a Open yard No Shade OR Breeze.
Many times I have wrapped a rag around a small diameter piece of tubing and taped it in a shop vac hose to retrieve nuts and bolts.
Duct or Welding tape wad on the end of a broom handle has been my friend a time or two.
Horrible hole to work in. Gear dope, jaggers, sunflower seed husks, lunch bx left overs, snoose, and of coarse there is always the yarding engineer who likes to p**s on the drums. Did I forget anything. d.d.
Just thinking about what are the crappiest places on a beat up old crane, I would think that this potential space that stuffs get collected probably qualify as one of those dirty places. I guess the other places could also include inside the engine compartment? How about inside an old beat up crane cab? The cleanest is probably an open surface where the rain does the washing job naturally and frequently? lol
I remember seeing a package with a universal fix it for all the do hickeys, thing-a-ma-jigs, whatcha-a-ma-call-it's, etc. Instructions were to chew till desired consistency and apply where needed. It was a piece of Bazooka bubble gum!
Liebherr LTM 1350 There's no getting down into the winch area, even after unwinding all the rope, on this one....lol...
Bad places on a crane? Between the engine and the gear train. Under the upper horizontal swing shaft if independent swing and travel. Worse, under the upper horizontal swing and travel shaft if the machine doesn't have independent swing and travel. Under the carbody and above the gear box for the travel shaft. Anywhere between the chain case and the horizontal drives. Anywhere around the boom hoist. This all apply to the Koehring in my avatar.
Hahahaha John, I did lot of American crane work. There is no good place.
The first time I sat down in a rope shovel, the operator looked at me and said "Job 1 is not throwing the ropes."
Oh, I have stories about that too. I used to warn the apprentices. DO NOT BIRDS NEST THE CABLES, THE OPERATOR WILL HUNT YOU DOWN AND KILL YOU
LOL He had done it at some point. We were sitting in P&H 4100 and he made it clear to me that filling the house with rope was not an acceptable sin.
The old Madill towers had dogs on the drums for parking. If you forgot to set the dogs and the air bled off, oh yeah, bad things. It made the most interesting sound.
I was given the opportunity to play with a long handle B-E with a drag bucket, don't remember the model #. It was only drop and drag but I was politely told to "GET OFF THE MACHINE NOW!". I guess I'm not friction crane material.
Oh, I can run any piece of old logging equipment But NEVER get me confused with an operator I used to take the apprentices out into the forest and show them how to run the machines. Hard to diagnose and repair a machine if you can't try it out.
So finally had time to add the luffing jib to the sennebogen 5500... which pretty much double its height. Height configuration is about 45m. There is one more main boom and one more jib section i couldve use but didnt since this was going to be displayed on my desk. A few plastic bolts did get dropped but good thing they didn't fall into the winch area! I was able to recreate the famous NYC crane disaster a few times while I was building up the jib and connecting it to the main boom. The jib makes the crane 100% better but it's definitely could be dangerous if you don't lower it down correctly for parking.
The machine I've seen like that, Demag 4000, had to have the wheel horses installed in order to lower the jib. That is a cool model.
most of the crawler crane i see don't have a jib configuration. i guess that's mostly used in the building related construction, esp inside cities? jib looks cool though
The LR 1600 getting built up. the hs 855 looks tiny next to the LR 1600 and a 12m LR 1600 boom section. I really want to see an actual 650+ t crane but they are so just hard to find....lol... i guess a fair amount of people here seen these? Even the winch drums are huge on these!
LR 1600 A frame reeved. 16 sheaves on A frame, 17 on the crane . I get to taste a little of what's a PITA it is to do the reeving .Good thing this won't have to be taken off even if the crane goes back in the box..... I guess in real life, most crane A frame is reeved only once and that's it? Although i think i've seen some big cranes that also have detachable A frame? what a pain! .....lol..
Even with a short 30m main boom, LR 1600 is huge compared to HS 855... I want to see some 600+ t cranes, but i guess you will only see one at petrochemical or power plan sites mostly? Looks to be too big for most road construction or routine building sites... Anyone got any suggestion where else i can swing by to see some heavyweight cranes?
How about a ring crane. A diecast model for sale was listed at $3995.00. If you want something bigger Mammoet is apparently developing a 24,000 ton version! https://www.constructionscalemodels.com/en/mammoet-ptc-twin-boom-ringer-crane-wsi-wsi410006 https://cranemarket.com/blog/mammoe...-crane-with-stoof-engineering-and-innovation/
I thought SK10000 was huge, the mammoet is even bigger...lol... but that article is from 2016 so it's 4 yrs later and they still haven't released it i guess? Yeah, that ptc model is out of production so the price is "a little inflated" on that site...lol... There's also a separate luffing jib set for the ptc. fully built that thing is more or less 4m high! The sgc-120 ring is also available directly from sarens for "relatively a lot cheaper" than that ptc sale price on that site. I am trying to save up for the soon to be rereleased CC8800 with boombooster. Just wish i can find a place to see these 600+ t in action but its so hard to find anything bigger than 200 t crawler....
This was a few years ago, up front and personal.
The Steam Generator is roughly 744,000 pounds
The counterweight cart 'Made the Package'!!! And yes it is dancing on the tires tippy-toes with the load on it.
Nice! Wish i can see one of these 600+ t big boy up front close and personal. That hook and its reeving looks impressive!.. Kinda motivating me to maybe also reeve up my LR 1600 heavy hook block which i think probably have that many falls of rope, using two winch drums... Reeving the A frame with 16-17 sheaves was tiring....lol... It's so hard to find anything above 200t around....
LR 1600 600 t heavy lift block: 9 sheaves on each side of the block and 10 sheaves on the boom head for each of the two winches. Hook block is modular so it can be broken down and have only 1 group of sheaves in the middle for 300 t Reeving the full block for both winches is 38 lines of rope! more work that reeving the A frame ;( The small piece of paper next to it is a stand in for a 6ft tall person...
Tadano ATF400 with full length luffing jib (125 m total height). about 2.5m height in 1/50 scale
Gonna use that when it's time to flip the mattress? Those models are pretty cool.
I am not a crane operator and it is so hard to find cranes with full on luffing jibs around so this is like the only way i can get my dose of these aside from youtube videos. In that pc, the ceiling is actually also holding up the jib. i guess when i have time, i will try to put on the full attachment of ballast, TY guy, luffing jib bridle attachment, etc. But it's quite impressive how high these 1/50 models can go.
Oughta see the Real ones, up close, scary how much they sway in a light breeze, many times with winds coming will boom the whole mess down to grade.
it's amazing that a lot of these full length luffing jibs are actually a lot longer than the actual main boom! I
LTM 1500 next to XCMG XCA1200 and its separate very heavy boom. Makes the LTM 1500 looks small. XCA1200 is almost a chinese copy of the LTM11200. in this model, there is even an adapter that will allow for use of the 11200 luffing jib! I would pay to see either one of these in action!
Either that or someone will post a video of it falling on Youtube!
We always folded the luffer down to the ground every night so the tip wheels set on the ground with the whole thing looking as a inverted V. Very staple in all but a tornado that way.
I would pay to see a luffing jib being rigged up! haven't seen any personally except on youtube ;( even the luffing jib sets are hard to find for model cranes
Do you have any Weiss Brothers cranes? I would die for the RC 1/14 scale dragline. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmKQdnUUDdXgJod-7q1PF2w
1/14 is too big for me. and too much cost ;(. But it is cool to see a model crane over 10m tall lol..