What Is a Gantry Crane

Mainly, a Gantry crane is a crane which functions on the basis of lifting heavy objects by a hoist. This hoist fits in a trolley and it shifts horizontally on rails. The rails are suspended on very strong pillars joint in an extremely solid frame. The Gantry crane has the ability to move from one edge of the building to the other. The hoist has mobility on the other direction. In this way, a Gantry crane can cover the whole surface of a room. The oldest Gantry cranes, which are now historic monuments, were Samson and Goliath, in a dock in Belfast, in Northern Ireland. Each of these Gantry cranes was able to lift weights up to 840 tons, at 70 meters height.

Types of Gantry Cranes

The shipbuilding Gantry crane: as the name shows, these are cranes used on shipyards for installing very heavy objects in their places on the ships. For example, the ship engines are put in their place with a Gantry crane.
Workstation Gantry crane: these are smaller cranes, used inside factories for car manufacturing, to lift the engines out of the cars and putting them back in place.
EOT Gantry crane: this acronym stands for Electrical Overhead Travelling, and it means that the crane works similarly to an overhead bridge crane. The difference is that the rails are installed on the floor, not at the upper side of the crane.