ELECTRIC OVERHEAD TRAVELLING CRANE WHEELS

EOT cranes are widely using now-these days in steel industries for transporting the materials from one location to another.

We will consider the wheel of Electric overhead crane

Electric overhead traveling crane is used to transfer the goods in workshop or in any engineering organization; it uses no. of wheel that runs over the rail track. As per the capacity and span of crane manufacturer will decide the no. of wheel should be used for that crane.

Function of Wheel

The main purpose of wheel is to move over the rail track and provide the ability to crane to move from one location to another with rated load.

EOT crane long travel wheel

Rail tracks are made of High Manganese steel that will be very hard material, hence we have to select the material for our wheel that will have slightly lower hardness as compared to rail track because if there will be any misalignment between the erection of crane wheel then it’s collar will touch the rail track and wearied out rapidly.

So in order to design the wheel we select the material like EN-9 or EN-8 that have hardness around 300 BHN and as rail track hardness will be around 350 to 380 BHN.

In EOT crane wheel, there will be collar on both side of wheel and the width of this collar will be around 20 to 25 mm depends on the diameter of wheel.

Crane Wheel specification

There are some important technical specifications of long travel wheel for electric overhead travelling crane (same for cross travel wheel also)

Root diameter

Collar width

Bearing used

Material selection

Process selection

For our safety purpose we used to provide hardness about 340 BHN up to 20 mm deep in root diameter of wheel.

As wheel runs over the rail track so in order to avoid the rapid wearing of its diameter this hardness is provided.

Required properties for this product

There are some specific and necessary properties of crane wheel that we have to mention during purchasing the desired quality crane wheel

1. Material EN- 8 or EN-9

2. Hardness 250-300 BHN

3. Surface finishing should be good

4. Root diameter hardness should be 350 BHN up to 25 mm deep

5. Collar width should be 20 to 25 mm both side

6. Wheel shaft forged should be made of 300 BHN

7. There should not be any clearance between shaft and wheel

8. Self alignment roller bearing should be used

9. Bearing housing (both side) made of simple mild steel

10. Self lubrication & good strength

Processing method

Normally all manufacturer uses forging process to manufacturer the wheel for crane, there is some advantage of this process

1. Good flexibility in design

2. It provides better strength

3. Processing time is also short

Possible limitations

There are some limitations during the design of the crane wheel and these are as follows

1. Wheel material should be hard but not more than the hardness of rail track as due to wearing action rail track got damage if it has less hardness as compared to wheel and it is easy to replace the crane wheel as compared to replacement of track.

2. Root-width should be at least 30 mm more than the width of rail track, as during the operation there will be shifting in diagonal direction.

3. Root diameter selection depends on the capacity of crane, more capacity crane requires larger diameter of wheel.

4. Shaft diameter is also depend on the capacity of crane.

Steps to minimize the cost

In order to minimize the cost material selection is very important, some manufacturer uses EN-24 but it is too much costly and much hard but that much hardness is not required for crane wheel.

Processing method also play crucial role in crane wheel, the best method to process the crane wheel is forging process as this will develop and provide the better strength to wheel in less time.

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