Teamwork: Steelwork company employs ABUS EOT cranes with two hoists in tandem operation

Culleré i Sala (www.culleresala.com) is a company situated in Polinyà about 30 km north of Barcelona in the far north east of Spain. Culleré i Sala is a company engaged in project planning, designing and developing, producing and installing steel structures, with an expertise of more than 30 years in the industry. One of the main objectives of the company is to offer their customers optimised results as to quality, price, and completion times. Culleré i Sala considers these three factors combined as their obligation owed to the customer.
Diverse projects realised by the company—which has been enjoying continuous growth with outstanding values in the past years—may be divided into three main categories: building of individual buildings, refurbishment of existing buildings, and industrial buildings. Continued growth is the fruits of Culleré i Sala’s commitment to innovative concepts, in particular in the food industry, and the commitment of the whole company to customer service. Their customer service far exceeds the mere steel structures and includes presenting every customer with efficient solutions as a standard.

Culleré i Sala has currently a range of outstanding projects on the go in Spain and other countries such as France, Poland, Mexico, and Kenya. The company aims to continue their sustainable growth without losing sight of their service availability, a characteristic of the company. Therefore their new business premises were designed in such a way as to put emphasis not only on production but much rather on engineering which constitutes the greatest added value of Culleré i Sala.

Production and showroom rolled into one
The new production premises, inaugurated early in 2018, amount to 4,000 square metres. In addition, Culleré i Sala moved into 600 m² of new office space. The new premises are designed with “open doors” to allow the customer to gain an impression of the day to day work of Culleré i Sala. Thus the customer may be convinced of the technological performance of the company as well as of the good workmanship. This is a manufacturing company serving simultaneously as showroom: each customer, every project office, and all suppliers may observe the different stages of production with the machinery used in action.

ABUS EOT cranes—the ideal solution
Among the machinery you will find 5 ABUS EOT cranes of the latest generation with safe working loads of between 6.3 and 16 tonnes and spans ranging from 14.9 to 21.1 metres. All cranes belong to the single girder ELK type with welded box girders: the optimal solution in this range of load capacities and spans.

Two of these cranes are located in the area of flame cutting, mechanical processing, and blasting. They are fitted with one hoist each with 6.3 tonnes SWL and classified as FEM group 3m in order to conform to the heavy workload they are subjected to. Another crane with a load capacity of 6.3 tonnes and a span of 21.1 metres is operating in the second production section to serve different work stations where such works as the reinforcement of the steel components is carried out. In the last production section the other two cranes with load capacities of 16 tonnes are used also to load lorries.

ABUS cranes operating in tandem—in true teamwork
These two cranes feature two hoists each with SWLs of 8 tonnes each. They may operate with the hoists in tandem or with both cranes and all four hoists simultaneously. The crane control ABUControl with which all cranes are fitted make perfect synchronisation possible—indispensable for such a kind of crane operation. This type of crane configuration with tandem operation with two cranes and two hoists each is the solution for an important work aspect at Culleré i Sala: the handling of steel components with lengths exceeding 30 metres and widths of more than 4 metres.

In addition, the crane control ABUControl with which all cranes have been fitted offers the option—vital for Culleré i Sala —of anti-sway and frequency converter controlled crane and hoist travelling. The frequency converter enables customised travelling profiles: these are adapted to the needs of the crane user. Thus smooth travelling can be ensured when huge voluminous parts need to be moved while higher speeds may be realised when smaller parts are transported. All cranes are operated via the ABUS radio remote control of the ABURemote Button type. The crane operator is so in a position to move the huge steel components from a suitable distance comfortably and without being hindered by control cables of push button pendants.

The whole project right from a first offer up until installation and commissioning was managed by ABUS Grúas (www.abusgruas.es) the Spanish daughter company of ABUS Kransysteme GmbH. The cooperation with Culleré i Sala went even as far as designing the cranes in the corporate colours of the company. In conjunction with the company logo of Culleré i Sala the ABUS cranes are now even a visually perfect match for the new production.