Emergency Rail Weld Repair & Long Travel Wheel Replacement On A Foundry Overhead Crane

For around five years, we have looked after the cranes and lifting equipment at a local foundry. It’s an industrious environment and the equipment runs around the clock, six days a week, which is why the site operates a bi-weekly examination scheme and why we have a single day each week in which to carry out inspections and any repairs that come out of them

While carrying out the LOLER examination on a 10-tonne overhead travelling crane, in fact a 20-tonne machine downrated to cope with the intensity of the workload, one of our engineers found that one of the long travel rails had developed a crack running across it. The same defect had gone on to damage one of the long travel wheels that runs along that rail, so both needed urgent attention.

As our client was well prepared and the replacement long travel wheel was already in stock, nothing was held up waiting on parts. We arranged a team of four engineers, two of whom are welders, and got to work.

Existing safety lines and walkways were in place, and with the help of a Nifty HR21 4×4 boom lift, we reached the rail and carried out the repair. While that was underway, two of our crane engineers worked from the top of the crane to complete the long travel wheel swap. The welding process itself was laborious and extremely thorough, carefully built up to achieve the result we wanted rather than the quickest we could get away with.