Jib Crane Outlet » Jib Crane Installation

What Holds a Jib Crane to the Floor?

Tad Dunville — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 20:16:08 +0000

A jib crane is anchored to the foundation or wall with anchors that can be ordered with the jib crane or purchased by the customer at a local bolt or supply house. It is important that the jib crane be anchored to a proper concrete footing or properly engineered wall or building column. Bolts alone cannot anchor most jib cranes into industry standard 6” reinforced concrete floor. The floor will buckle, the crane will collapse, loads and/or people will be hurt. If you have any questions, please call our office first or reference your owners’ manual supplied with every jib crane. A jib crane is easy to install provided the directions are followed carefully. Most customers prefer to install their own jib cranes but installation is available through Jib Crane Outlet installation field crews.

Footing Design for Jib Cranes

Tad Dunville — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 19:55:37 +0000

Floor mounted jib cranes need to be mounted properly or the crane will collapse, resulting in damage to the load as well as human injury or death. A small selection of jib cranes can be mounted straight to a 6” reinforced concrete floor, the industrial building standard. The rest of the floor-mounted jib crane range must have a square of factory floor torn up and a specially-designed concrete footing installed.

How do I determine if my jib crane needs a foundation? Plan on needing a foundation unless your crane engineer tells you specifically otherwise. How do I know how big to make that foundation? Dearborn will supply you with a drawing showing the length, depth, and width of the foundation required, as well as any reinforcement required and the anchor bolt placement. Dearborn also offers a kit consisting of anchor bolts, anchor bolt template, and early kit shipment so the customer can set the foundation including anchor bolts before the actual jib crane arrives.

Thrust and Pull – Wall Jib Loadings

Tad Dunville — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:00:46 +0000

Thrust and pull are the forces exerted by a wall-mounted jib crane on the wall. Most of the time the phrase “wall-mounted” actually means the jib crane is mounted to a steel building column as if that building column were a wall. A standard steel building column is engineered to support the weight of the building roof as well as anything that hangs from that roof: lights, ducts, fans. Typically these extra items are light weight and inconsequential to the building design. However, when one mounts a heavy jib crane capable of lifting 4,000 pound loads, the building column must be specifically designed or adapted to support the jib crane.

Jib Crane Thrust and Pull

Who can design or adapt a building column to support a wall-mounted jib crane? Typically this person is an architect, engineer, or general contractor with engineers on staff. A safe rule of thumb is to have a Professional Engineer or “PE” stamp the drawing showing the modification or design.

So what exactly is thrust and pull? All wall-mounted jib cranes have a beam and a beam support device, usually either a tie-rod or vertical-mounted mast. There will be two hinges to allow the jib to swivel 180 degrees. One hinge is always at the place the beam meets the wall. The beam is the running beam for the hoist/trolley. The other hinge is always where the support device meets the wall: either the end of the tie-rod or vertical mast. The tie rod is above the beam, while the vertical support member hangs below the beam, like an inverted “L”. Because the load is hanging off the beam, the beam is like a lever being pulled by the load.

If one envisions the beam as a lever being pulled down, it’s not hard to imagine the top hinge is effectively fighting to pull out of the wall, while the bottom hinge is effectively fighting to go thru the wall. Pull and Thrust. See the drawing. The wall or column must be engineered to withstand the pull on the top hinge and thrust on the bottom hinge.