Understanding Mobile Crane Basics

A Mobile crane is a load lifting equipment with telescopic or lattice boom fixed on a movable chassis.

This chassis can be a truck’s chassis with wheels or a crawler chassis.

Now, coming to the components of a mobile crane, it can be divided in 4 main parts:

1. Upper Structure (SUPERSTRUCTURE) : This part has the Operators Cab, a winch mechanism(lifting) and sits on a rotating swing, which is known as a slewing ring. This allows the upper structure to revolve 360 or to the applicable rotating capacity. So if a load sits on right side of the mobile crane and has to be put on left side, the crane picks it up through the boom and rotates with the help of swing table and places it on the left side.

2. Boom : It is the structure which handles the lifting and is based on the reach requirement. The reach requirement is can be understood as how far the load is kept from the mobile crane.

There are two types of boom used in mobile crane.

A) Telescopic

B) B) Lattice.

The info graphic below will help you understand this part.

3. Chassis or the Carrier of Lower Structure: This part refers to the base on which the turntable swing and the above two components sit. It plays an important role in the movement of the mobile crane and generally is of two types

A) Truck chassis with wheels(All Terrain, Rough Terrain)

B)Crawler Tracked chassis

4. Outrigger: This part refers to the extendable legs of the chassis which provide support and stability to the complete structure. Based on Hydraulic mechanism, these outriggers once extended and opened verticlally towards the ground lift the crane off it’s tyres. This mechanism helps in distributing the crane weight and provide stability to the structure which in turns makes it stable for lifying heavy loads

There are 4 type of mobile cranes:

1. Truck Crane

2. All Terrain  Crane

3. RoughTerrain Crane

4. Crawler Crane

We will discuss these in further articles