RADIO SYSTEMS AND CRANES CLOSELY LINKED

Crane technology has been experiencing a technological boom for years and thereby developed from a pure “lifting gear“ to an automatic transport system for load of any kind and weight. Cranes have become an indispensable part of intra-plant material flows and production processes, focusing on metal and construction industry as well as on mechanical engineering and container construction or shipping (container transport) and waste treatment (waste sorting). This development has become possible thanks to the availability of increasingly powerful technologies of drive, communication and particularly radio technology. Amongst others, this has led to a close “application link“ of radio systems and crane technology.

Economic and operational benefits of crane automation are opposed to highest requirements to availability, reliability and safety in daily operation: crane technology and radio technology are required to cooperate intensively here for ensuring safe lifting, transporting, lowering and putting down of even heaviest load e.g. in workshops or harbour facilities. This requires compliance with strict safety regulations, a challenge for drive and control technology and more particularly for data radio to which Schildknecht AG in Murr has been committing with a high degree of intensity for 35 years. A particular feature of this company is the equal status of innovative mechanical engineering and intensive application consultancy in the business model.

This cranes is automated by use of the radio data transmission system DATAEAGLE. The product family DATAEAGLE 3000 (Wireless PROFIBUS) and DATAEAGLE 4000 (Wireless PROFINET) for transmission of PROFIBUS and PROFINET is perfect for cranes due to its data pre-processing. Wireless data transmission from PROFIsafe is also possible.

1. The DATAEAGLE Master functions as the base station and is mounted directly beneath the ceiling construction. DATAEAGLE radio systems are available as IP20 for DIN-rail (picture) mounting as well as IP65.

2. The crane trolley receives and sends data via the DATAEAGLE Slave. The maximum range between Master and Slave is 300m using Bluetooth as the radio technology.