Hoist improves efficiency, reduces strain

With an intelligent assist device, Porclain Hydraulics convinced workers to stop manually lifting heavy loads.

By Noël P. Bodenburg, Managing Editor -- Modern Materials Handling, 3/1/2007

For Porclain Hydraulics, the challenge was to find a hoist that would get workers to stop manually lifting loads and use the right tool for the job.

Because the regular jib hoists that were in place had long, heavy swing arms that were slow and inconvenient, many operators preferred to lift parts manually.

But in Porclain’s Wisconsin facility, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of hydraulic motors, that was not getting the job done.

The company needed to lift cylinder blocks for the motors from a container of steel castings and then place them into a machining fixture. The steel cylinders measure 9 inches in diameter, are 3 inches thick and weigh 30 pounds—and the procedure requires some precise movements as well.

Enter five intelligent assist devices (Gorbel, 800-821-0086, www.gorbel.com). These hoists, with a shorter working radius, lift the parts with a magnet and then quickly move the part to the fixture. Then, the operator is able to switch the device in float mode. Once in float mode, the hoist counterbalances the weight of the cylinder so that it seems weightless. The operator can then maneuver the parts into position with their fingers.

“You can spend all the money in the world to provide a tool or set up a system, but if the operators don’t see any benefit in it, they aren’t going to use it,” says Jon Seboe, manufacturing engineer at Porclain. “This combines technology and ease of use, so the operators are eager to take advantage of it.”

With the success of that implementation, the Seboe decided to install some additional assist devices in a newly build cell that loads several machines. It features an overhead, four-post bridge that is 20 by 40 feet. Now, Seboe says, one operator can handle the entire cell.

“It can be customized to be highly effective in different areas,” he says, “and we’ve taken advantage of that.”