Engineering business boosts productivity with mobile handling kit04 February 2014

Commercial & Military Engineering (CME) has taken delivery of its third Stertil Koni mobile column Earthlift set, after the first two resulted in improved productivity in its maintenance and servicing operation.

Newark-based CME offers engineering support for commercial and specialist military vehicles, and has two workshops at its site.

CME's first two sets of Earthlifts were a replacement for an old cabled lift installation. CME realised the benefits of mobility and versatility, so ordered a third set for its mobile engineering team, which undertakes repair and maintenance at customers' premises.

"We've used many different types of vehicle lifts over the years and we've yet to find one that comes even close to the performance of the Earthlifts," says CME's Stephen Wallis.

"They are used constantly in our workshops and their combination of versatility and reliability enables us to work on 10 or 12 vehicles in a typical week. Productivity is superb and we're able to turn jobs round very quickly."

A key feature of the lift is its active energy retrieval system, which uses gravity and the load of the lifted vehicle to retrieve energy and store it in the batteries of the lift's wireless mobile columns. This increases lifting cycle capability by 35%, compared to a fully-charged set of standard wireless mobiles at maximum load.

There are no cables, so the columns can be set up easily and access to vehicles is maximised. Variable raising and lowering speeds mean vehicles can be positioned accurately – important when removing heavy components such as engines and transmissions.

The 8,200kg-capacity Earthlifts are used to handle various vehicle types, including Bendy buses, coaches and eight-wheel military vehicles.

When used as a set of four mobile columns, the lifts provide a combined capacity of 32 tonnes. For heavier or longer vehicles, additional columns can be added, up to a maximum of eight columns per set.

Author
Laura Cork

Related Companies
Stertil UK Ltd

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