Page 45: of Marine News Magazine (February 2015)

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Balanced

Dredging with

E-Crane ne doesn’t usually think about cranes when talk- ing about dredging, but cranes form a big part of

Othe niche business. And, even though Indusign/

E-Crane Worldwide has over 200 cranes in operation since

Lieven Bauwens and Geert Watteeuw partnered up over 20 years ago, they are perhaps not that well known in dredging circles on this side of the pond. The Belgian com- pany has tons (pun intended) of experience engineering their balance cranes. During that time, their equilibrium crane has more than proven itself in the scrap industry, as half of their machines operate in scrap yards throughout the world, but the crane can handle much more than just scrap. Its popularity continues to grow in ports for han- dling other materials, such as coal, grain, cement and iron ore. And now, that reach includes the business of dredging.

Today, only a few E-Dredgers are in operation world- wide. Dredging is actually E-Crane’s smallest market, but one which they hope will someday yield great success.

Neverthless, for projects that involve large scale dredging projects, there are better machines on the market to accom- plish those missions. Where the E-Crane excels, however, is when projects that call for precise or maintenance dredging.

One important advantage of the E-Crane dredger is being able to know where the grab is digging at all times, as op- posed to a cable crane, where precise placement of the grab is impossible. In fact, E-Crane dredgers even have a system inside of the operator’s cab that tracks the grab placement and displays that information on the operator’s screen.

Balance & Equilibrium

The balance crane principle is simple. The “E” in E-

Crane stands for equilibrium, a key feature of the parallelo- gram style boom which provides a direct mechanical link between the stick and the rear counterweight. There are no steel winches or cables in the design. The counterweight continuously balances the total weight of the steel structure along with half of the operational load. As the lifting radius is varied, the change in the load moment is automatically

Images courtesy E-CraneImagescourtesyE-Crane 45 www.marinelink.com MN