Find the Right Crane for Your Facility with Spanco’s System Selector

When looking at making improvements to a facility, it is common for many facility managers to find that additional lifting assistance is needed to speed up production, transportation, or other work processes. As you may or may not already know, any lifting application can be benefited by a crane solution! However, the question is: what type of crane works best for you?

Spanco’s System Selector Tool

While a free consultation from a material handling professional (such as Bode!) is a great way to go for finding the right crane solution for you, a quick and easy way to get an understanding of the crane system you may need is Spanco’s System Selector Tool. Spanco’s System Selector is easy to use as it walks you through the process of finding the right crane for your application. First, you select the system type your facility needs, whether it be a mobile or permanent solution.

Mobile Crane Walk-Through

If you end up choosing the mobile system option, the next choice will be the travel method you plan on using to transport the crane. There are 3 choices here with manual travel, moveable by forklift, or powered travel. If you choose manual travel the next set of choices to come up will be “Height Under Beam;” in other words: is the needed distance from the floor to the top of the system more than 18 feet? If you choose moveable by forklift or powered for the travel method, then it will skip this step as the crane would be heavier duty and always above 18 feet from the floor. Once you have passed this step you are on to the final decision of needed capacity. For mobile solutions you have options of 1-3 ton, 5-7.5 ton, and 10-15 ton capacities. Once the capacity is selected, you will be recommended a solution that best fits your selections, allowing you to get a better understanding of what type of crane your facility needs! For our example, we were recommended a PF-Series Gantry Crane based on our choices in the system summary at the top right.

Permanent Crane Walk-Through

When selecting a permanent crane solution in the system selector, you are instead asked about the mounting method you will be using to secure the crane in place. Regardless of your selection here, you are then asked to choose the load movement (or user movement of the crane). If you choose the floor or ceiling mounting, you are given choices of circular, lengthwise and widthwise, or straight line. If you choose wall column mounted, you can choose between a 180-degree or 360-degree movement. After you have chosen a load movement, you will then pick your capacity. Capacities differentiate based on your decision in the user movement. Regardless, you will be able to choose from different capacities no matter what movement you choose! Finally, you are then given your results! For our example, we were recommended two cranes with either a monorail crane or workstation bridge crane being good options for us based off of our choices in the system summary.

Our Conclusion on the System Selector

This tool is a quick and easy way to get an idea of what cranes can benefit your facility depending on your specific needs. You can even access more information about these cranes right from the results tab! Try it out for yourself here! Once you are satisfied with the answers, you are free to reach out to a material handling rep (again, like Bode!), or you can even ask Spanco directly right from the results tab.