If you’re in Bryan-College Station and looking to hire a crane service, there’s a good chance you’ll get a crane rigging expert to go with it. Industrial cranes are complicated pieces of machinery that need more than one person to operate. The person in the operator’s chair is important, but they aren’t the only specialist needed for a successful lift.
However, the duties and knowledge of crane rigging experts aren’t as well known. Hereā€™s what you get when you hire one.
What Is Crane Rigging, And How Is It Done?
Simply put, crane rigging is how one prepares materials to be lifted by a crane. This is an immensely important job, as any mistake in rigging up the payload could result in disastrous accidents. In a worst-case scenario, it could fall off, but even a minor imbalance could result in unpredictable wobble or swing as it’s lifted.
So, the crane rigger is at least as important as the crane operator when it comes to safely lifting large heavy objects.
This is usually accomplished through a sling-and-hitch setup, with the object to be lifted first wrapped up in some fashion, then attached to the crane’s arm with one or more attachment points. There are three basic techniques here:
- Basket hitching: With a basket hitch, the object to be lifted is wrapped in a sling, or sometimes a double sling, and then lines connect to the crane’s arm from both ends of the object. This is a good all-purpose method, although the object needs to be roughly uniform in size and shape, or else there will be balance problems.
- Choker hitching: Like in a basket hitch, the object is wrapped in a sling, but the sling is wrapped tight around the object. Then a single attachment point is used at the top center of the object. This can lift more unbalanced objects, with careful placement of the choker.
- Vertical hitching: This is a very rarely used method that essentially tethers the object to be lifted directly to the crane. It’s occasionally called for with particularly unusually shaped objects but brings a significant danger of the object spinning and rotating – throwing off the crane’s balance.
So, it’s easy to see just how important crane rigging is when you hire a Bryan-College Station lifting service! You need crane operators focused on safety – and that’s why, when you need lifting done, you should contact Bobcat Contracting.
