Kaup

At the Kaup Company in Aschaffenburg / Germany – a leading provider of fork lift truck attachments – the idea of allocating an individual slewing crane to each workplace came to fruition.

A total of 74 VETTER slewing cranes in column- and wall-mounted design were delivered, partly in special design with four jib arms being mounted onto one column. This gave each one of the 74 work areas its own slewing crane with waiting times and downtimes due to lack of transport means being avoided. Fork lift trucks transport the initial material to the work areas and then everything else is done by the slewing cranes. Cranes with a capacity of 500 to 1,000 kg and an outreach of 5 to 6 m were installed. Regarding the support structure, two different versions were used: Columns with up to four mounted jib arms were installed and the pre-existing hall supports were used to mount two to four jib arms. This special design resulted in great saving of space since only one column is necessary where normally the installation of four columns would require much more area.

Cranes with one or two jib arms are daily business for VETTER. "But the four-jib-arm design like in this case for the Kaup Company is something truly special. We don't do this everyday," this is how Stefan Müller, Domestic Sales Manager at VETTER, comments on this extraordinary project.

All workplaces have cranes mounted at different heights to prevent any individual jib arm from obstructing one another at nearby workplaces. Another special feature of the Kaup project is the fact that jib arms of the slewing cranes are used as feeding bridges providing individual workplaces with energy supply. This is how power, compressed air, etc., can be supplied to the workplace with the utmost precision. Exhaust air such as welding gas etc. can also be carried off by means of suitable units.