Spent a couple of days putting up a Potain tower crane recently, been meaning to post but been a bit busy and sorting pictures out is very time consuming.

I've taken a quick snap at most stages of the crane going up, gives you some idea what is involved in erecting a tower crane. This is quite a small tower, hence the reason a 150 was doing it but the principles are the same all the way up to the really big ones.

The tool for the job, Leibherr LTM1150 6.1



The base in and leveled, must be perfect, couple of millimeters out on the bottom could been a couple of ft at the top!!!!


32.5m radius, more wagons turned up and unloaded.


Unloading a wagon.


Base ballast going on, bottom of the thing needs to be weighed down! lol


All the ballast on the base so we can start building up.


Building the jib up on the floor, it will be lifted complete.


Another tower section placed and the slew ring and cab lifted


End of day 1!....we left the crane for 3 days now as the concrete base had not hardened enough to put the weight of the whole crane on.

Start of day 2, bright and early


Back jib placed


Started to cloud over.....put the winches and motors on the machinery deck


Placing the A frame


Once the A frame is fitted my crane is used to lift the back jib up to fix the pennant lines from the top of the A frame to the back jib.


Then 2 of the 7 counterweight blocks are added


Then we're ready for the jib we built up on day 1, you cant see but the hook block is attached to the end, that will be reeved when the jib is fixed in position.


Whats happening here is i've moved the jib past where it needs to fix so the bridle can be attached to the pennants, the bridle is pre reeved on the ground on took up with the A frame earlier.


Once that is sorted the jib is moved into position and attached.


Its then all tensioned and the weight is taken of me as it takes the weight of its own jib


Then we place the actuators for the variable position counterweight


Rest of the counterweight is added


And hey presto, one tower crane.


lol, that took ages!!!!!!!

Enjoy
Gaz

Thats fantastic work! how I envy your job!!

GAZ YOUR PICS BROUGHT BACK A FEW MEMORIES. I STARTED OUT ON TOWER CRANES,AND MY FIRST JOB WAS ON A BKT BN105 LUFFER. WHICH I BELIEVE POTAIN BOUGHT THE RITES TO. SO IVE ADDED A COUPLE OF PICS AS THIS CRANE IS PROBABLY AN EARLIER VERSION, THESE WERE TAKEN WHEN THE JIB WAS REMOVED TO HAVE A SECTION ADDED. AS SOMEONE SLIPPED UP AND SPECED THE WRONG LENGTH JIB SO IT COULDNT REACH PARTS OF THE JOB. A COSTLY MISTAKE [[][/]][/[][/]]

I saw more than a few tower installations / teardowns while living in Atlanta. The crane work is always impressive to watch, but I was especially in awe of the workers assembling the structure itself. The big tower cranes don't look like much from the ground (size-wise) once they are actually up in the air, but the riggers are climbing around some really huge chunks of steel floating in space. No margin for error at all.