Somiram is an industrial company for the maintenance and renovation of handling equipment, is a member of VERLINDE’s after-sales service and of the EUROPONT network. The company specializes in the expertise of overhead handling mechanisms such as bridge cranes, jib cranes, gantries, conveyors or storage and retrieval cranes. Somiram manufactures standard lifting mechanisms but also studies and produces bespoke equipment. The quality of its services has made it a dependable partner for large industrial groups and SMEs alike. Somiram operates in the automotive, timber and agrifood industries. Business is concentrated in the east of France. Somiram is currently confirming the advantages of VERLINDE’s EXPERTCARE remote monitoring application for lifting mechanisms, rolled out in the Spring of 2020, with one of its long-standing customers who produces and assembles land-based and marine engines.
Somiram is helping its customer for the load testing of their equipment, in addition to the design, assembly and maintenance of their lifting mechanisms. The production site in Mulhouse manufactures and assembles land-based engines, used as generators and control units for pumps and compressors. It also manufactures marine engines at the site mainly for the propulsion of ships but also as auxiliary power for fishing boats, coastal trade, dredging and unloading equipment, high-speed patrol boats and ferries.
Load tilting, a highly technical solution
Two lifting units mounted on a double-girder crane (10 tons SWL), designed, manufactured and installed by Somiram, are used for the assembly of parts and the shifting of finished or half-finished equipment. Some of these operations require load tilting. This manoeuvre is complex and requires two lifting units on the same trolley because the centre of gravity of the load offsets to a single hook. Somiram’s new trolley is fitted with two EUROBLOC VT type hoists (SWL of 5 tons for each) with true vertical lift for a max. load capacity of 10 tons, a height of lift of 9m, lift speeds of 10 and 1.7 m/min, travel speeds of 20 and 5 m/min and transfer speeds of 32 and 8 m/min.
VERLINDE EUROBLOC VT electric wire rope hoists, designed for loads of from 800 to 80,000 kg, can boast no less than 13 patents for their design. Here they are equipped with load limiters with EXPERTCARE’s MT2 module and apps which calculates the SWP, counts the number of manoeuvres and overloads as well as a load summing unit for the 2 lifting mechanisms in order not to exceed the max. utilized load of the crane, together with VVF drives on the 2 horizontal shafts.
Supervized maintenance
The EXPERTCARE module is used in the main for the maintenance of heavy-duty mechanisms or for high value-added cranes. The system consists of a wireless dongle that reads the data of the MT2 installed on a EUROBLOC VT-type hoist mounted on the overhead crane.
The immediate advantage of the application is the display of information on a smartphone or Android / iOS tablet while the operator remains at ground level. The communication range between the dongle and a reading device is 15m as standard or 50m with an external radio antenna. In our case, it allows a preview of the use of hoists by the customer especially for their compliance with maximum loads. The EXPERTCARE application allows the display of the following: faults, alarms, remaining lifespans of the hoist, brake and contactors together with a readout of the load, the internal MT2 temperature and the time of operation. MT2 parameters can be transferred by email.
Somiram systematically carries out a complementary check on EXPERTCARE data by means of an inspection platform. Somiram’s CEO, Mr Tissot, has seen for himself that there is no discrepancy between data displays and visual checks.
