Specialty Lift Equipment: Mobile Rigging/Lifting

This specialty lift equipment is used to lift some of the worlds largest machines, materials and vehicles. The previous design utilized a bulky control station only capable of controlling only two legs at one time. Lifts utilizing more than two legs required multiple control stations which operated independently and added unnecessary costs. Alignment of the lifting cylinders was accomplished manually using multiple spotters and operators. Coordinated travel of the towers along the rails required a large, cumbersome interlock system of steel supports and chains.

GS Hydraulics and its customer jointly developed a hydraulic system and electronic control solution to solve these challenges. During the lift function, a closed-loop software program monitors and controls the electro-hydraulic proportional valves to ensure that the machine is lifting within its safe capacity, level and height limitations. Synchronized control of the lift function allows the operator to precisely move up to four towers consisting of 16 cylinders with a single control joystick. The highly efficient, coordinated hydraulic propel function ensures all towers travel at the same rate and spatial relationship with respect to each other. Multiple spotters and operators are no longer needed with the integration of a hand-held pendant control station or radio remote control technology, which allows one operator to maintain complete control while walking freely around the entire machine.