The Challenge
Often, mechanical handling is required in buildings that aren’t all straight walls and high ceilings. Commercial handling equipment is rarely capable of tailoring its operation to accommodate such complex spaces.
This can be extremely limiting, restricting operations to lower heights of lift and reduced hook coverage. In certain situations, this could be restrictive to the point of considering new premises, something that isn’t always a realistic option.
The Solution
SCX has developed many handling solutions that are designed specifically to fit in and around awkward spaces. Some of our systems are designed to help decommission ageing nuclear buildings, or to handle defence munitions, where the option of relocating simply doesn’t exist.
As always, our approach remains consistent – to listen and understand our client’s challenge and to blend the best industry-proven equipment with our in-house engineering capability. The result is systems that are truly fit for purpose and which help our clients to achieve their operational goals.
Technical Details
- A cantilevered crab and offset hoist create valuable extra headroom, without sacrificing hook coverage or load handling capabilities
- Integrity and safety are primary objectives, with multiple layers of protection against overtravel, overspeed and overhoisting
- Clean room specification includes loose article control, a shrouded hoist, prescribed construction materials and a special paint finish
- SCX provided a safe, stable and reliable man-riding platform for maintenance staff to descend below ground in this smelting plant
- The platform provides access to kilns beneath the workshop floor, which require regular maintenance and repair to keep smelting quality high
- SCX designed the solution to be mobile, carried by an overhead crane to multiple kiln pits around the plant
- An extending bridge helps this solution to reach beyond its rails into recesses along the length of a nuclear storage facility
- Installed in the Pile Fuel Storage Ponds at Sellafield, it’s one of a pair of cranes that SCX designed to help decommission the facility
- To ensure safe access into tight corners, nose guide wheels help the extended bridge reach as close as possible to the pond walls
- SCX developed an innovative, track-mounted robotic installation rig to help with the construction of London’s Crossrail project
- The rig travels on the rails to bring pre-built, pre-tested screen doors right to the platform edge, before lifting them precisely into place
- This eliminates assembly in the restrictive dimensions of an underground platform, with doors pre-made and tested before arriving at the station
- The Gherkin in London has no flat roof to support conventional building access equipment, and required something special in its place
- SCX designed, engineered, built and installed five machines to help access the inside and outside of this distinctive London skyscraper
- Our solution allows maintenance staff to access the full external façade of the 160m high building, and the interior and exterior of the top floor’s ceiling
- Rolls-Royce needed to transport aero engines around its assembly facility, using its existing ceiling-mounted infrastructure
- SCX designed and built an integrated multi-unit mechanical handling system based on two travelling hoists and a 60-tonne capacity turntable
- The MotoSuiveur-equipped, high-safety trolleys can transport payloads between multiple storage bays and the main engine test cell
- SCX designed a travelling gantry for the Royal Opera House, which has an 18-inch gap in its rails
- The gap allows the fire curtain to fall, so the gantry has bespoke end carriages and extra wheels, allowing the gantry to safely span the gap
- The gantry also carries a cherry picker to help reach all parts of the auditorium for service and maintenance activities