Mobile crane
heavy duty crane which can transport itself from place to place
A mobile crane is a cable-controlled crane mounted on crawlers or rubber-tired carriers or a hydraulic-powered crane with a telescoping boom mounted on truck-type carriers or as self-propelled models. They are designed to easily transport to a site and use with different types of load and cargo with little or no setup or assembly.
Overview
Mobile cranes generally operate a boom, from the end of which a hook is suspended by wire rope and sheaves. The wire ropes are operated by whatever prime movers the designers have available, operating through a variety of transmissions. Steam engines, electric motors, and internal combustion engines (IC) have all been used. Older cranes' transmissions tended to be clutches. This was later modified when using IC engines to match the steam engines' "max torque at zero speed" characteristic by the addition of a hydrokinetic element, culminating in controlled torque converters. The operational advantages of this arrangement can now be achieved by electronic control of hydrostatic drives, which for size and other considerations is becoming standard. Some examples of this type of crane can be converted to a demolition crane by adding a demolition ball, or to an earthmover by adding a clamshell bucket or a dragline and scoop, although design details can limit their effectiveness.
History
Before 1870 cranes were fixed to a position, except for some mounted on flatcars, railroad cranes, which provided some restricted movement.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Mobile crane” is heavy duty crane which can transport itself from place to place. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Mobile, crane and heavy, not as a finished interpretation.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mobile crane” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.