Three days, one crane: the world’s largest mini spider crane builds a sorting line inside a working production hall
Czech UNIC dealer KMB Stavební Servis has used a UNIC URW-1006 to install a complete sawdust sorting line inside the production hall of one of the country’s largest pallet manufacturers, working around live operations.
A mixed bag of lifts
The customer produces returnable and bespoke pallets, with timber processing that also extends to plywood and counterweight veneer. Sawdust is a constant by-product, and the new sorting line was needed to keep the plant running cleanly.
What made the installation awkward was not a single heavy pick but the spread of them. The line arrived as a large number of individual components, most of them bulky but comparatively light at between 150kg and 400kg, with one section weighing a full 2 tonnes. Every piece had to be set into an exact position inside a hall that stayed in production, which ruled out anything with an engine exhaust or a large set-up footprint.
Why the biggest mini crane fitted
KMB deployed the URW-1006, the largest machine in the UNIC range and, on the manufacturer’s reckoning, the largest mini spider crane on the market. Despite that billing it is 2m wide, which was narrow enough to work inside the hall without shutting the surrounding lines down.
The crane offers a maximum capacity of 10 tonnes, so the 2-tonne section was handled with a substantial margin in hand, and a maximum lifting height of 30.7m with a 24.3m working radius — considerably more than this job required, but useful on installations where the crane has to reach several positions from one set-up.
Configurable outriggers with a full interlock system allowed the machine to be rigged on an asymmetric factory floor. Radio remote control with live feedback gave the operator readouts of safe working load, actual load, radius and boom length while placing each component, and a pick-and-carry capacity of up to 1.5 tonnes let parts be shifted from the staging area to their final position without a second machine.
One crane, no swaps
The practical result was that KMB did not have to change machines part-way through a job that mixed light, awkward components with a single heavy lift. The complete line went in over three days.
KMB Stavební Servis has been the official UNIC Cranes Europe dealer for the Czech Republic and Slovakia for many years, with a project list that runs from high-rise glazing in Prague and rooftop whirlpool installations to lifting historic bells into church towers.
Source: Unic — Photos: Unic
Crane facts
- Crane: UNIC URW-1006
- Max capacity: 10 tonnes
- Max lifting height: 30.7m
- Max working radius: 24.3m
- Width: 2m
- Pick and carry: up to 1.5 tonnes
- Heaviest component: 2 tonnes; most 150–400kg
- Duration: three days
- Dealer: KMB Stavební Servis, Czech Republic