Somiram, an industrial company that maintains and renovates handling equipment, is testing Verlinde’s Expertcare remote monitoring application for lifting mechanisms, which was rolled out in the Spring of 2020, with one of its customers who produces and assembles land-based and marine engines.

It is an industrial company that maintains and renovates handling equipment and is a member of Verlinde's Europont after-sales service network. Verlinde, is a leading French manufacturer and exporter of lifting and handling equipment.

Somiram, which specialises in overhead handling mechanisms such as bridge cranes, jib cranes, gantries, conveyors or storage and recovery cranes, is helping its customer for the load testing of its 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, patrol boats and ferries.

Two lifting units mounted on a double-girder crane (10 tonnes 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 tonnes for each) with true vertical lift for a maximum load capacity of 10 tonnes, 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 and boasts no less than 13 patents for their design, 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 maximum utilised load of the crane, together with VVF drives on the 2 horizontal shafts.

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 15 m as standard or 50 m with an external radio antenna,” said Jean-Yves Beaussart, international marketing, communications and sales, Verlinde.

“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  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,” he added.

Somiram not only manufactures standard lift mechanisms but also produces bespoke equipment. The quality of its services has made it a reliable partner for large industrial groups and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) alike. The company operates in the automotive, timber and agrifood industries and its business is concentrated in the east of France.

“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,” Beaussart added.