GH has recently launched the new GHB11 hoist, in close collaboration with Schneider Electric. Equipped with Schneider Electric’s new Altivar 32 series of speed inverters, this custom-developed machine delivers excellent performance.
GH, an industrial crane manufacturer with more than 50 years’ experience and a strong global presence, with over 100,000 units manufactured and distributed worldwide, equip sits machines with commercial components as a strategic business approach. This is a differentiating factor, as it makes spare parts quickly and easily available to customers all over the world.
In the early 1990s, when the company began its international expansion, it embarked on a successful technology partnership with Schneider Electric as the supplier of most of the electric components for its end products, acknowledging the value of its quality, availability, brand image, service and global presence. Some recent examples of the benefits of this partnership include safety system improvements such as the anti-swing or load limiting systems and solutions for optimising working times. The collaboration with Schneider Electric has provided and continues to provide added value in this area, developing and delivering solutions to meet customer needs.
GH’s main concern is and has always been to improve its manufacturing quality, and this has made it a pioneer in the standardised use of frequency inverters for hoist and crane movement. This technology advance has enabled GH Cranes to improve features such as movement speed and precision control, smooth crane acceleration and braking, prevention of hazardous rocking and motor protection systems, prolonging their working life and that of their mechanisms. All this means advantages for customers as regards safety, productivity and lower maintenance costs.
In keeping with this desire to improve its products and enhance the features provided to customers, GH asked Schneider Electric to develop a motor control frequency inverter for lifting movement, for standard inclusion on its new range of hoists.
The new converter has now been launched and provides GH’s customers with numerous advantages for lifting movement:
The frequency inverter reduces starting peaks, which means less voltage drops and therefore higher electric line efficiency. Braking is electric with a deceleration ramp and the mechanical brake is subsequently applied, which not only reduces load swing but also practically eliminates brake pad wear, as in practice the mechanical braking system is only used as a parking and safety brake. A closed loop encoder is incorporated at this stage for low-speed lifting, preventing the load from shifting.
The standard inclusion of a speed inverter for lifting movement is an innovative solution that has been well-accepted on the market, and over 1000 units of this new hoist with the Schneider Electric Altivar 32device have been manufactured to date.
The speed inverter’s main features are its integrated safety functions, incompliance with current standards, a highly compact size (just 45 mm),programming versatility, ease of configuration and an integrated encoder card, enabling total process control.
To add to all these improvements and advantages, Schneider Electric’s collaboration with GH is continuing and the two firms are currently developing competitive crane safety systems such as the new anti-swing and crane self-testing systems and remote maintenance. The partners thus continue to jointly innovate with a view to creating new solutions to make this lifting and loading equipment manufacturer more competitive on a world level.
