ABUS HB-System at Brålanda Industri in Sweden

The Swedish company Brålanda Industri AB (www.bralandaindustri.se) at Trollhättan on the southern shores of lake Vänern in the southwest corner of Sweden is a producer of mechanical components and steel structures. Their customers include companies in the building industry, companies that produce heavy duty lorries or that are employed in off-shore industries. Brålanda Industri AB specialises in laser cutting sheets and plates, in welding works carried out by specialist welders or by robots and in treating sheets and plates by deburring, bending or edge pressing for example. For this latter task they employ a state-of-the-art edge bending machine with a press force of between 20 and 300 tonnes.

Since 1996 ABUS cranes have been used to transport components through the different sections in the treatment processes within the production. The first crane acquired by Brålanda Industri AB was a single girder EOT crane with a load capacity of 3.2 tonnes. In the course of the years several jib cranes were added to serve individual workstations. With the company continuing to grow and boasting full order books, a further investment was made in spring 2015 to purchase another HB system in order to optimise the internal material flow. This HB system consisted of an EHB single girder crane system with three cranes in total on a track 39 metres long. The span of the cranes reaches 6.6 metres and the maximum load capacity of two of the cranes is 250 kg whereas the third one has a SWL of 500 kg. All three cranes feature ABUS electric chain hoists with manual trolley travelling. The crane track consists of the HB250 ABUS profile known and proven for many years. The crane profiles, however, use the new profiles HB150S for the lower load capacities of 250 kg and HB190S for the crane with the higher SWL of 500 kg. With the introduction of the new HB system ABUS has reinterpreted proven technology: the advanced development of the profiles is matched by the optimisation of the trolleys, a combination making for greater precision in tracking and contributing to smoothness and quietness in daily crane operations. This means that the crane operators enjoy higher comfort when moving loads as crane travelling in this kind of load range is carried out simply and easily by hand. A mechanical distancing device ensures that the three cranes stay at the required distance.

The whole project was handled by the local ABUS subagent JJ Gruppen (www.jjgruppen.se) all the way from the initial consultation through to the installation and commissioning of the cranes. Brålanda Industri AB also relies on this long-time ABUS partner and their dense net of service and repair points when it comes to servicing and maintaining the cranes. They have a service agreement with the JJ-Gruppen for the new HB system also.