EOT Crane specs and functions
The EOT Crane is considered the most-widely versatile of all cranes used in industrial applications. Engineers continue to tweak this already-superior crane design to make these machines ever ore indispensable in today’s modern industrial plants. EOT cranes are sued in just about every industrial application, from a nuclear power plants to steel foundries to rolling mills. The cranes have numerous advantages over other types of lifting equipment that have allowed this design to be the mainstay of the industrial world. It helps that the design specifications are easy to understand, and once these specs are understood, it becomes obvious why this type of crane is such a good investment.
The EOT crane is a skeletal assembly that is like a canopy with outside supports. The crane assembly spans the outside of the workspace. The crane itself is overhead. It rolls along two girders that are attached to an overhead steel framework. The crane assembly can be moved laterally in any direction and access every square foot of the workspace below without physical restriction.
The EOT consists of 11 major parts-this parts list includes the lifting hook and the operator’s cabin. For the purpose of understanding functionality of the EOT crane, there are four parts to note: the end carriages, the rail gantry, the bridge, and the crab. The crab is the actual crane assembly that does the grabbing and lifting.
The end carriages are steel assemblies that contain wheels on which the crane rolls. The wheels roll on the rail gantries which are stationary girders that run the length of the workspace (assume it rolls north to south and vice versa). These girders essentially act as travel platforms for the moving crane assembly that is suspended to girders that form the “bridge”.
The bridge is essentially a smaller pair of girders that are connected together and which move together in the north and south direction. The bridge is essentially a rail gantry that lets the “crab” or crane assembly roll in east-west direction on the bridge. The bridge allows the crane assembly that does the actual lifting to move horizontally in the other direction (in this case, east to west and vice-versa).
The obvious advantages of the EOT is the fact that it takes up no floor space, there is no swinging of a crane assembly to create safety hazards, and the fact that the operator’s cabin is up above the work area, permitted unobstructed views. EOTs are also all electric, for pollution-free indoor operation.