Double girder bridge cranes from Konecranes in use around the clock

Schoellershammer has been producing paper on the northern edge of the Eifel region since 1784. Since 2016, the company has only produced packaging paper, which is now supplied to customers in Europe and overseas. Every year, the 240 employees at the headquarters in Düren produce around 450,000 tons of paper. A 9,560 square meter hall for an additional state-of-the-art paper machine and a new building for stock preparation have been built on the company premises. An investment in the future, with which the paper specialists have more than doubled their production volume to around 500,000 tons of paper per year. The power of high-performance cranes is required at several points in the paper production process. Schoellershammer relies on Konecranes for this.

"We were on board at Schoellershammer at a very early stage during the planning of the new 180-metre-long production halls. Together with TBP Engineering GmbH from Linz, we developed a crane concept that is optimally tailored to the paper production processes with technologies such as load-dependent lifting speed and load sway protection," explains Dirk Gawrich, Sales Manager at Konecranes. The crane experts designed a double-girder gantry crane for material preparation and two double-girder gantry cranes for the paper production hall.

"Stock preparation is the first step in paper production," explains Armin Vetter, Managing Director at Schoellershammer. To ensure the cleaning and maintenance of the sorting and cleaning machines in stock preparation, a crane with a high load capacity is required. Konecranes has therefore installed a double-girder overhead travelling crane with a lifting capacity of 15 tons and a lifting height of 15.21 meters. With its span of 29.10 meters, the crane spans the entire width of the hall and can move along the entire length of the hall.

Lifting paper rolls weighing tons every minute

The two cranes ensure highly efficient processes. Photo: Konecranes

In the production hall, the new high-tech paper machine transforms the base material into high-quality paper. Every hour, it produces a paper web around 70 kilometers long, which is rolled onto 5.60 meter wide reels. At the end of the new production line, the paper rolls weighing up to 45 tons have to be lifted out of the paper machine and deposited in the interim storage area. A crane is also required for this. "The crane is needed about every 70 minutes. Then a paper roll is taken out of the machine and prepared for cutting," says Dirk Gawrich. Another crane then places the paper rolls in the winder.

The tasks in the paper production hall are performed by two Konecranes double-girder gantry cranes with a span of 23.80 meters and a lifting height of 16.45 meters. The two cranes are each equipped with two 35-ton hoists. An additional 5-tonne auxiliary hoist is attached to one crane for maintenance work. "Precision is required for transporting the paper rolls. For this reason, the two 35-tonne hoists have to work absolutely synchronously. That is why we have equipped them with tandem operation. The ESR technology also automatically adjusts the lifting speed to the load," says Dirk Gawrich. Due to the high frictional forces involved in paper production, the rollers, which can weigh up to 48 tons, have to be replaced several times a year. Konecranes has equipped one of the two double-girder overhead cranes in the paper machine hall with an additional 60-tonne hoist. This is used to lift the rolls out of the machine.

Truconnect for high availability

With the ESR hoist inverter (extended speed control via frequency inverter), the hoist speed can be infinitely adjusted. This is because the ESR technology automatically adjusts the speed to the current load of the wire rope hoist. Truconnect Remote Service is also used to record the operating data of each crane. Schoellershammer also uses the CARE service program from Konecranes. "Our new paper production hall is an investment that has to run around the clock. The high availability of each crane is extremely important for our processes. So we always have Konecranes at our side, whether in the planning phase, during construction or now in daily operation," emphasizes Armin Vetter, Managing Director of Schoellershammer.

www.schoellershammer.dewww.konecranes.de