Mass Crane and a local, Rhode-Island based injection mold company are pleased to announce the successful commissioning of a new, custom-designed 5 Ton bridge crane system this past May. Working in partial clean-room conditions, over the course of 3 weeks, Mass Crane's experienced team of millwrights and service technicians installed the new system during 1st shift, allowing their customer to continue to use their machines during second shift for the duration of the installation.
Mass Crane is pleased to announce the successful commissioning of a replacement, unequal leg, 50 Ton capacity, dual hook gantry crane for the Holyoke, Massachusetts Gas and Electric Company (HGED). The crane services four gates that control the Connecticut River water flow to the hydroelectric station on-site.
When Providence Water made the determination that its existing Patented Track monorail and interlocking crane system was structurally deficient, they began the search for a local crane company who could remove and replace the system safely, efficiently, and effectively.
When Devine Stone Works settled on a location, a showroom design, and a shop floor layout for their new facility in the fall of 2015, they soon realized the building posed serious challenges from a material handling perspective.
When you think of Milton CAT, you probably think of expertly designed, rugged, well-built, domestically manufactured equipment with a great track record of sales and service. When Milton CAT had to choose a bridge crane company to provide fourteen 5 through 15 Ton bridge cranes and eight 1/2 and 1 Ton jib cranes, they chose Mass Crane, a company with a similar resume.
June 2014: The President of a local prominent glass fabrication and machining company is looking for a new building for expansion of his company. He knows that any building he chooses has to be able to accommodate several crane systems to handle his glass slabs, so he calls Mass Crane . Mass Crane visits his current site and meets with the President, his architect, and his contractor.
When a major New England steel service center needed two large cranes for a new outdoor crane bay, and needed them delivered and installed in 5 months or less, they turned to Mass Crane.
Mass Crane and its sister company, New England Crane, are pleased to announce the successful installation of two 200 Ton bridge cranes for Bath Iron Works in Bath, ME. Built in Ashland, Virginia by Virginia Crane, these dual hoist, 132 foot span, 200 Ton double girder bridge cranes were commissioned, load tested, and accepted by BIW in mid-August, 2015.
When a major New England steel service center needed two large cranes for a new outdoor crane bay, and needed them delivered and installed in 5 months or less, they turned to Mass Crane and its sister company, Connecticut Crane.
Through multi-phase coordination and overlap scheduling, fabrication on the first girder began a short 8 weeks after receipt of the order. Mass Crane leased auxiliary fabrication space and moved its previously scheduled fabrication work off-site for the duration of the job. Crane #1 was delivered and installed 15 weeks after the order date. Crane #2 was delivered and installed 19 weeks after the order date, days before the deadline. The two cranes are currently in service at the steel service center and a valuable addition to their fleet.
June 2014: The President of a local prominent glass fabrication and machining company is looking for a new building for expansion of his company. He knows that any building he chooses has to be able to accommodate several crane systems to handle his glass slabs, so he calls Mass Crane. Mass Crane visits his current site and meets with the President, his architect, and his contractor.
For the next six months, Mass Crane worked with the glass company and designed several conceptual material handling solutions for the different buildings and layouts suggested. Once the glass company settled on a building, Mass Crane then addressed the specific challenges posed by that existing building and the new addition planned.
Mass Crane and Hoist worked with the building contractor to design, fabricate, and install a continuous, 225 foot length 5 Ton runway structure, supported from brackets off of new building columns. The runways support a brand new 5 Ton, 36′-4″ Span, Mass Crane and Hoist built, top running, dual motor, electric bridge crane in the front of the building. This new crane serves as their shipping/receiving crane and was fabricated, installed, and commissioned early in the construction process to support construction and moving parts and machines into the new building.
One side of this runway structure, in the middle of the bay, also serves to support one end of a custom designed nested support structure that supports six (6) parallel, 1/2 Ton, enclosed track workstation crane systems and electric chain hoists. The super low headroom design of the support structure gives the glass company more headroom than they needed, allowing them to spin 6’x12′ glass slabs without hitting the hoist, chain container, or crane festoon. Mass Crane designed a freestanding, building-independent frame on the other end to support this nested system and provide sufficient hook travel to suit the glass companies requirements.
A 1 Ton, 16 foot span, 16′-6″ tall freestanding mast type jib crane and electric chain hoist was provided and installed in the rear of the building.
Once the glass company moves all of their production and inventory over into the new facility, Mass Crane will return and take down the existing 5 Ton crane and hoist. It will be transported back to Mass Crane’s 20,000 sq-ft fabrication shop in Tyngsboro, MA. There Mass Crane will disassemble the crane, cut it down, and re-build it to fit in the new building. Finally, they will work with the glass company to install the modified 5 Ton Crane on the rear of the 5 Ton runways at a time and in a way so to not interfere with their production.
April 2016: Mass Crane and Hoist recently reached completion on this project with the successful installation of the modified 5 Ton Crane in the rear of the building. This crane was built in 2006 by Mass Crane and had been in operation in the customer’s previous facility. Mass Crane and Hoist took the crane and hoist down and transported it back to their fabrication shop in Tyngsboro, where the crane was shortened, serviced, cleaned, and painted to look like new. Then, so as to not interfere with the customer’s busy production schedule, Mass Crane and Hoist re-installed the crane in the Glass Company’s new facility on a Saturday, working around the customer’s equipment and product safely and effectively.
Mass Crane and Hoist and its sister company, New England Crane, are pleased to announce the successful installation of two 200 Ton bridge cranes for Bath Iron Works in Bath, ME. Built in Ashland, Virginia by Virginia Crane, these dual hoist, 132 foot span, 200 Ton double girder bridge cranes were commissioned, load tested, and accepted by BIW in mid-August, 2015. With girders almost 10 foot tall, 3 foot wide, 132 foot long, and weighing up to 157,700 lbs, just getting the girders into the area took careful planning and coordination. Thanks to the collaborative efforts of Bath Iron Works, PC Construction, Virginia Crane, Mass Crane, New England Crane, Cote Corporation, S & A Cranes LLC, Clyde’s Transfer Inc, and Gushee Rigging, all four girders and four hoists were installed during a 4-day period in April 2015.
Because of the massive size of the girders and hoists being erected, the amount of floor space available, and the tight overhead clearances available, every sequence of the installation had to be planned out weeks in advance of the April mobilization. Mass Crane was responsible for designing a 10-page lifting plan outlining each of the 14 “critical” picks made. Furthermore, Mass Crane and New England Crane worked with Virginia Crane and PC Construction to compile a day-by-day schedule for the two weeks during the major part of the installation. Because of the extensive advance planning and the collaboration of many companies, the installation went off without issue. For additional information, please see the below excerpts from Bath Iron Works’ monthly newsletters.
When you think of Milton CAT, you probably think of expertly designed, rugged, well-built, domestically manufactured equipment with a great track record of sales and service. When Milton CAT had to choose a bridge crane company to provide fourteen 5 through 15 Ton bridge cranes and eight 1/2 and 1 Ton jib cranes, they chose Mass Crane, a company with a similar resume.
With spans up to 62 foot, Mass Crane was able to build, paint, and wire all fourteen bridge cranes in a 3-week period in early August, 2015. Weighing up to 14,460 lbs per crane, Mass Crane chose a brand new Genie GTH 1544 Telehandler for the installation. Along with 1,694 linear feet of ASCE 40# crane rail, just under 900 linear feet of conductor bar, and 8 jib cranes, Mass Crane and Hoist completed the structural installation in just over 7 weeks.
As the authorized Caterpillar Dealer in the Northeast, Milton CAT relies on longstanding vendor relationships to provide first class service to our customers. One of these vendors is Mass Crane. I have worked with the folks from Mass Crane for many years and have come to rely on them from initial design and installation to startup and service.
MILTON CAT, LONDONDERRY, NH
Thanks to coordination between Milton CAT, the construction manager New-Tech, and Mass Crane, the cranes were all erected immediately after the steel and slab were completed and before the electrical/HVAC/sprinkler companies began their work, minimizing disruption to the jobsite. The cranes, which you can see below in the Key Plan, are expected to be tested and commissioned later this fall.
When Devine Stone Works settled on a location, a showroom design, and a shop floor layout for their new facility in the fall of 2015, they soon realized the building posed serious challenges from a material handling perspective.
Mass Crane and Hoist met with Devine Stone Works over the course of several months to conceptualize, layout, and ultimately engineer and design two independent, floor supported 5 Ton crane structures. The two cranes, which operate at two different elevations roughly 6′ apart, overlap, creating a 12’x15′ “crossover area.” The structure of the lower and upper crane system was designed to allow the lower and upper cranes to occupy the same space without conflict. The loading bay structure is equipped with cantilevered columns in two locations and offset columns and a header in another to prevent the possibility of getting hit by a truck while backing under the crane.
The upper crane system is equipped with electronic zoning limits to prevent the high bay hoist from entering the showroom area and colliding with the showroom walls. Both cranes are equipped with laser-operated, two-event, anti-collision devices that slow a crane when it approaches the adjacent crane, and stops it before collision. Both cranes are equipped with handheld radio remote control devices for ease of use and operation.
Thanks to the hard work of Mass Crane’s sales staff, engineers, fabricators, millwrights, and service technicians, and the cooperation and teamwork with Devine Stone Works and the building’s owners, United Home Experts, the two cranes were tested, commissioned, and turned over to Devine Stone Works in May 2016. Construction is ongoing, and Devine Stone Works hopes to open their new facility later in the year in Ashland, Massachusetts.
The upper crane system is equipped with electronic zoning limits to prevent the high bay hoist from entering the showroom area and colliding with the showroom walls. Both cranes are equipped with laser-operated, two-event, anti-collision devices that slow a crane when it approaches the adjacent crane, and stops it before collision. Both cranes are equipped with handheld radio remote control devices for ease of use and operation.
When Providence Water made the determination that its existing Patented Track monorail and interlocking crane system was structurally deficient, they began the search for a local crane company who could remove and replace the system safely, efficiently, and effectively.
In February 2017, Mass Crane and Hoist commissioned the 2-Ton crane and monorail, completing the job with an 125% capacity load test per ASME specification, and handed back over to Providence water for their use. All the work was performed safely and efficiently, and the facility didn’t face any down-time or loss of productivity during the replacement.
Mass Crane is pleased to announce the successful commissioning of a replacement, unequal leg, 50 Ton capacity, dual hook gantry crane for the Holyoke, Massachusetts Gas and Electric Company (HGED). The crane services four gates that control the Connecticut River water flow to the hydroelectric station on-site. The existing gantry crane, built over 50 years ago was controlled by a manual hand crank, many of the parts were long since obsolete, the structure was severely corroded, and HGED employees had to climb up its legs to remove, then replace cross braces every time the crane was moved. When the time came to select a bidder for the project, Mass Crane and Hoist was selected based on cost, design, and their unique installation plan which allowed for virtually no down-time for HGED.
Mass Crane's project managers worked together with HGED to develop and implement a schedule for the completion of the work in the spring of 2017, to be finished before HGED's "busy season." Mass Crane installed the new crane using a 275 Ton Hydraulic crane, set up in engineered locations above the hydroelectric penstocks. Five trailer loads, four legal and one overwidth and escorted, were coordinated for arrival on-site over the course of 2 days, with the bulk of the actual crane assembly completed in one 12 hour day. Mass Crane's millwrights and electricians then expedited the completion, startup, commissioning and testing of the new crane, complete with a HGED scheduled outage and gate test-pick, before the old gantry was rigged and removed from the dam. In May of 2017, Mass Crane turned the new Gantry over to HGED, where it will service the city for the next 50 years.
Mass Crane and a local, Rhode-Island based injection mold company are pleased to announce the successful commissioning of a new, custom-designed 5 Ton bridge crane system this past May. Working in partial clean-room conditions, over the course of 3 weeks, Mass Crane’s experienced team of millwrights and service technicians installed the new system during 1st shift, allowing their customer to continue to use their machines during second shift for the duration of the installation. From Mass Crane’s initial site visit in the summer of 2016, Mass Crane’s team of salesmen and engineers worked hand-in-hand with their customer to identify, approach, and ultimately resolve a wide variety of challenges to implement the new material handling solution.
The small room is filled with large, injection mold machines which occupy the majority of the floor space, leaving little room for crane structure. The top of the machines was only 27" below the drop ceiling, and there was an existing monorail built into the ceiling that extended 8" below.
The monorail allowed the customer to remove molds and drop them on carts in aisles along the far walls of the room. End approach with a standard crane and runways built within the room would not allow the customer to reach the aisle with the crane hook.
The new interior runway beams, which would span over the injection mold machines, would present a major logistical installation problem.
Mass Crane's design team visited the site several times to identify the machine locations, the room geometry, the aisle locations, as well as the customer's work flow, process, and material handling needs. They then drafted a conceptual crane plan which, upon returning to the site and reviewing with the customer, was revised several times before a working plan materialized.
The clean room wall on one end of the room was removed, allowing Mass Crane to build their end frame within the end wall, maximizing runway length. Custom "low profile" end stops were designed as well as an offset bridge beam, minimizing the end approach and allowing the customer to reach the aisle with the hook.
The existing monorail and hoist was used to move runway beams into position, where they would be re-rigged with two custom narrow aisle fork trucks and set on their columns.
The existing monorail and hoist was used to move runway beams into position, where they would be re-rigged with two custom narrow aisle fork trucks and set on their columns.
Since removing the entire ceiling or torch cutting the existing monorail were both impractical, Mass Crane used a sawsall and removed over 80' of monorail beam in pieces, giving the new bridge enough clear height to travel over the machines and underneath the lowest obstruction.
