Guidefast: A Faster & Easier Alternative to Festoons

The Guidefast® guide trough is a lightweight steel trough designed for side mounting. It reduces your installation time by up to 80% compared to conventional guide trough systems and operates essentially maintenance-free. Watch this video with Product Manager Dan Thompson to learn more about Guidefast® and its advantages, how it compares to festoon systems, and how easy it is to install.

More From SAE Media Group

Transcript

00:00:00 [Music] today's webinar is going to be about an igis product known as guidefest it's a faster and easier energy chain alternative to conventional festoon systems starting off we'll just talk about the the current status quo with a lot of uh indoor crane and shop hoist applications and that is the humble festoon system

00:00:30 about as long as electric overhead traveling cranes have been in existence they've been using festoon systems it's a very simple way of cable management where the cable is just looped over some trolleys and as the hoist moves back and forth across the crane beam the cable is towed back and forth along with the hoist to

00:00:49 supply the electrical power typically uses either flat or round cables depending on the configuration the cables are typically clamped off to each trolley and they run inside of a rail like we see on the screen in this photo so it's worked fairly well for a number of years however as uh demands have been

00:01:08 are increasing and customers are trying to improve the technology the capability the flexibility of their equipment and also a need for faster installation faster output has arisen there certainly have uh some drawbacks of the festoon system have become apparent and i igus has noticed that and is

00:01:27 attempting to uh address those drawbacks with the use of our guide fast product so the guyfest product is pictured in in this photo right here attached to a crane what the guide fast product is is it's a specialized trough system that allows a conventional energy chain system to be side mounted onto a crane very quickly

00:01:47 and easily igus energy chains have been around for a number of years 50 plus years they've been used on cranes for for about that long the idea of the guide fast product is to allow the energy energy chain system to be quickly and easily integrated to the crane um specifically with the the types of

00:02:06 installation requirements that are needed for a crane typically side mounted um and installed very quickly so uh to show the installation of the guide fest product a little bit more and to illustrate each of the components and how they work together we have a short video that will show the system going together

00:02:26 give a rough idea of how it works so the core of the the guide fest system is the plastic installation bracket which we see being laid out here that's typically installed on at one meter centers along the crane girder in this example we're just installing it on a piece of racking for demonstration purposes the steel guide trough then clips into

00:02:47 that plastic installation bracket and it's secured by a clamping block and a screw and that's repeated at each installation bracket and there's a clip that's attached to marry up the edges of the two troughs then the chain which can be supplied from iges with cables already installed

00:03:30 as we see here is simply laid into the trough unrolled and the system is ready to be put into service so a very uh fast and easy way to integrate any chain onto a crane assume everyone out there is more or less familiar with igis energy chains i've used them on various different

00:03:52 types of machines up until a couple of years ago maybe five years ago and i guess e-chain installation on a crane may have looked something like what's pictured this installation would still offer all the benefits of an energy chain versus a festoon or any uh competing technology

00:04:09 but we see here that there really isn't a great way to mount this guy trough system to the crane structure so what's happened here is there's been a couple of pieces of angle steel that have been added they've been welded to the structure they've been drilled in a couple of places

00:04:24 and that's being used to support this guide trough this will work fine uh the only uh drawback of it is that it's a fair amount of work for the crane manufacturer uh or or the end user uh to actually do this steel work needs to be welded typically painted drilled and that's been a roadblock for certain customers looking to try and

00:04:44 take advantage of some of the other technical abilities of each aim so that really is it was the the goal behind the development of the guide fast product maybe five six years ago was to simplify the installation and allow for limited really no welding no painting as little drilling as possible something

00:05:03 that really can be put together very quickly to reduce the overall installation time so if we look at the components and the the sizes that are available as we saw the the install kit there is is the core uh piece of the system it's available in two styles a long version or a shorter version the difference being

00:05:24 the amount of strain relief teeth that can be used to attach additional static cables um sensor wires things like that throughout the crane beam so two variants there it's designed to handle medium travels with relatively light cable fill so when we say medium travels

00:05:42 we're talking typically in the range of 50 to 150 feet light filling by that we mean maybe between two and maybe eight maybe 10 cables total it's available in i guess 1500 2500 and 2700 series z chains what that means in in terms of uh actual dimensions is from the smallest size being 21 by 25

00:06:05 millimeters of interior space up to a maximum size of 35 by 100 millimeters of interior space so we have a a range of different sizes depending on the cable package what the piece of equipment is actually doing what size hoist but we can usually fit anywhere from a couple of cables all the way up to between eight and ten in some of the

00:06:25 larger sizes and that really is it's very rare for us to come across an indoor bridge grain application that that we cannot handle within that uh scope of energy change as we mentioned being uh ideal for indoor bridge cranes and shop voice that's really the the number one application area for this

00:06:43 product not to say that is the only application area we have used this product in a lot of different types of applications where mounting on the side is advantageous moving tvs theater applications plenty of things like that where mounting to the side is an advantage but by and large this is really uh the biggest advantages are offered to

00:07:04 manufacturers and customers operating and making indoor bridge cranes and hoists now we'll go through spend the next couple of slides going through the the pros and cons of energy chain versus festoons and also how that relates to to the guide fest system in and of itself and and how the guide

00:07:22 fest system can offer some advantages specifically to crane manufacturers so as we saw in the video the way that the guide fast system is installed is simply by one screw every one meter length so you see the the plastic install kits those are simply uh through bolted we have some customers that will that will drill and through bolt

00:07:41 we have some customers that will use the stud welding gun and will weld a threaded stud on at one meter intervals both of earth eq both work equally well just uh depending on customer preference but it's only one fastener that's needed every one meter length makes for a very fast and easy assembly and we're also able to do two hoists in

00:08:02 one single trough system so if you are a manufacturer who frequently builds cranes that have two hoists on one beam within that one trough system we're able to do two energy chains so we can feed both hoists uh with two chains running in one trough the reason for that and we'll see a little bit later with some of the

00:08:20 additional graphics that'll come up but the energy chain essentially only needs to be mounted in the center point of travel and then it will travel half of the distance in one direction half the distance in the other direction so with that center fixed point you can mount two chains essentially a mirror image

00:08:37 configuration we call it a pose configuration and allow for the both of the hoists to move back and forth with their cable management in a single trough system comparing that to the photo of the festoon system on the right-hand side first off we see that there's a substantial amount of metal structure that's coming off of the crane beam

00:08:55 at a minimum there are the horizontal supports to space the festoon rail off of the main crane rail you have some triangular gussets on the right hand side and then you have the longitudinal rail which the cable trolleys will slide in you have to have uh what we see here is a crane that's set

00:09:13 up for two hoists with the festoon system you'll see there's one set of festoon cables that's fully extended in this photo and another set that's fully retracted that's because a festoon is not able to do uh multiple points on a single rail this this particular crane here has

00:09:31 is being set up for two hoists and therefore it needs two festoon rails so a substantially greater amount of steel structure that needs to be fastened to the crane a larger number of fasteners more holes that need to be drilled so it definitely becomes apparent which solution is easier and faster to actually attach

00:09:50 to the crane beam next up we'll talk about transportation so one of the things that a lot of our crane manufacturing oems people that are building these cranes as as their their core business and selling them to end users they always want to be able to install

00:10:07 these things into their customers facilities as quickly as possible typically they pay more for on-site labor that's installing doing installation and service work at their customer and their customer also wants their crane installed as quickly as possible they want minimal downtime if they have a

00:10:25 project going on they want it started and completed as quickly as possible so in order to facilitate that they try and do as much pre-assembly in the shop in the manufacturing plant as possible now that relates to guide fast as we see on the left hand side this particular manufacturer who we work

00:10:42 with is able to install the guide fest system onto the crane back in their shop so they transport it down the road with the the energy chain and the cables already there so they get to the customer's site they hoist it up and just connect the ends and there really is no work that needs to be done

00:10:59 to install the cable management system as part of the installation at the end user's site comparing that against the festoon system you can see that the cable loops of the festoon hang down below the bottom edge of the crane beam the structure hangs out substantially farther than the width of the crane beam so it

00:11:16 would be much more difficult if not impossible to try and transport usually what would end up happening is that the festoon system would need to be installed on site which would lead to a greater amount and a longer duration of installation time at the end user's location versus work that could

00:11:35 instead be done at the oem shop so next up we'll talk about operational space so we have two graphics here or the one on the top showing energy chain and the one on the bottom showing the festoon system so first off before we go into the dimension points here we'll just see again what i was speaking

00:11:52 about with the opposed system where the fixed end of the energy chain is mounted in in the middle here and it basically goes half of its length this way and then half of the way the other way so there really is no structure or energy chain needed in in this area so for a two-hoy system we can take a

00:12:11 second one of these systems flip it make it a mirror image put its fixed point right in the center um and and let it articulate back and forth uh doing the two chains in one trough system some additional points on operational area an energy chain can be installed tight to the girder typically the height

00:12:29 is 18 inches or less of the overall system that's driven by the bend radius of the cable so the larger the bend radius of the cable is the larger the loop height of that energy chain will be certainly can be reduced less than 18 inches depending on the cable package smaller cables will bend tighter lead to a tighter loop

00:12:46 but in this product never more than 18 inches there's also a fixed dimension loop station which we see is the would be the with the 18 inches being the height of the green box the loop station would be the width of the green box so that is also driven by the bend radius smaller cables smaller batteries

00:13:03 will lead to a smaller loop station but that really is a maximum of 30 inches or potentially less depending on the cable package it's important to note that that loop station both the height and the width will always be constant regardless of whatever the travel distance is so if the travel distance is 50 feet that area where that's needed

00:13:24 for the loop is 18 by 30 inches that's dimensions do not change that the travel goes to 150 feet 200 feet even more it's always constant that area is not usable space because the the hoist cannot travel past that point to push the curve so it's advantageous to keep that that area of usable space

00:13:43 of unusable space as small as possible comparing that with of the festoon system you typically have loops that hang below the girder as we saw in the photos in the previous slide that can cause some problems with transportation it can also cause some problems with operational space if the facility it's being installed into is particularly cramped

00:14:03 if there are if there's racking or highly stacked material that those could potentially snag on or hit but there's also uh the issue of the variable loop parking station which can typically be between 10 and 20 percent of the overall travel so we see that highlighted in red the loop parking station here again being the width of

00:14:23 the red box so as a travel with a festoon system increases you need to add additional carriages with additional loops of cable or you need to increase the depth of the loop so if you have a 50 foot travel and it requires a certain amount of space to increase that to 100 foot travel you

00:14:43 either need to double the height of the loops so if they're hanging five feet then i would need to hang ten feet or you need to add additional carriages so if you had five carriages you now need to add ten so as the travel will increase the amount of space that the cable management system takes up will also increase

00:15:01 so with that being 10 to 20 percent of travel 100 foot travel that could be as much as as 10 feet that is unusable space where the hoist cannot travel past into that red area so with an energy chain our our uh usable space and our area of unusable space is kept to a minimum

00:15:20 um regardless of the travel distance maximizing the amount of travel travel distance for the for the hoist and clear space for working next up we'll talk about the service and maintenance of the two different systems with an energy chain no parts are marked for wear we say that once the system is put into service if it is installed if it's specified

00:15:39 correctly and installed correctly and it maintains installed in the proper configuration it should be truly maintenance free it should be set it and forget it and the system will achieve full service life completely on its own without any additional intermediate service or maintenance cables are fastened into the energy

00:15:56 chain by two clamps one at the moving end and one the fixed end so if a cable did need to become uh did become damaged and needed to be replaced or if there were needed to be an upgrade uh adding something new the cable can be released at those two points an old cable can be used to pull the new cable in in certain cases we'll even install pull

00:16:16 strings that can be used to add things at a later date cables will be clamped back off at the two points and the system can be put back into service comparing that versus a festoon system sometimes the trolleys do require a regular service a lubrication a greasing procedure on smaller festoons

00:16:33 sometimes it's not as much of a concern but as the systems start to get larger they do start to become some maintenance items that are required larger systems have some shock cables and tow cables which serve to lessen the strain on the cable as the subsequent trolleys pull out the shock cables and toe cables essentially are

00:16:52 lanyards that tie the two trolleys together we see them here in this photo where the longest line here is the cable and then we have the shock cable and the tow cable inside here which serves to tow the the subsequent trolleys along those items also occasionally will need replacement

00:17:10 so it's a service item that the machine needs to be taken down to to do that service also on on cable replacement replacing the cables requires disassembling a number of clamps so we see that and just about all festoons the cable we will be clamped at a minimum at the top as we see across with the top set of red arrows

00:17:30 so in this scenario we have six clamping locations and on on larger systems systems that use round cable or systems with longer loops it's also somewhat common for the cables to be clamped at the bottom of the loop as well so potentially as many as 11 clamps in the system so one of the things that we've seen a a

00:17:50 large increase in demand for is modernizing equipment making it more connected with the trends of industry 4.0 and preventative maintenance where we have a lot of customers that are wanting to add camera systems or additional sensors additional monitoring devices to their equipment

00:18:09 and doing that typically will require additional cables so if we needed to add a camera cable or upgrade a motor in any chain system you just release the two cables assuming there's sufficient spare space inside the e-chain that cable can be added in with minimal to no changes versus a substantially more difficult

00:18:28 process if you're trying to do it to a festoon system where the cables are fixed at potentially 11 points in this example or potentially more depending on the travel next up we'll talk about the cables themselves that go into the respective systems with an energy chain off the shelf round cables typically are used and combined

00:18:46 iges manufactures a complete range of all different types of electrical cables that are designed for use in energy chain systems and all different types can be combined uh fiber optic data power signal whatever it is that's needed can all be combined into a single system as well as different types of energy such as hydraulics

00:19:05 airlines media lines it maintains a defined bending radius at all times so that the manufacturer's suggested bend radius on the cables is always adhered to and the cables and hoses will achieve full service life comparing that against festoons flat cables are normally used there are there is a

00:19:24 fairly comprehensive range of flat festoon cable available for simple applications where just uh power and a bit of signal is required uh unique combinations uh if you have a customer that wants some special additions to their cranes sometimes the flat cables are not always available

00:19:42 unique combinations can require either custom cables where if a customer wants a special fiber optic element and an air hose or something like that where either a composite cable needs to be made which can somewhat be can be rather expensive and have a long lead time or round cables can be used but they

00:20:00 require some special clamping elements to manage those cables on the festoon trolleys one other thing to mention with the flat cable where all of the cable elements are essentially extruded together in one jacket is that if a single conductor fails in that flat festoon cable say it's something that

00:20:19 has 15 20 conductors if a single conductor fails there isn't really a way to replace just the failed conductor that whole cable needs to be changed an energy chain is much more modular in nature where you can place a a power cable a couple single conductors data the servo cable whatever it is that

00:20:37 you need and if one element fails or needs to be changed out replaced only that element needs to be exchanged the rest is able to stay in place and stay in service and the last point on festoon systems as you can see here with the uh the red arrows are indicating festoon does a fairly good job of maintaining a

00:20:55 minimum bent areas around the saddle where there is a structural component that fixes a bender radius but at the bottom of the loop there is no such component so the the benarius can be exceeded and the cable can also see some strain as it's pulled out and pushed back so typically we we are able to achieve a

00:21:15 longer cycle life longer service life of cables installed in your energy chain versus festoon cables also further on the cables and in terms of cable length and type of cable required both of these systems energy chains and festoons it's recommended to use a dynamic cable a cable that's rated for continuous flexing operation

00:21:35 continuous flex cables are by nature higher quality and therefore more expensive so both systems require that that higher grade cable to achieve a full service life but where they differ is that an energy chain typically requires somewhere in the neighborhood of 51 percent of the travel of that high flux

00:21:51 cable so as we spoke about the the system travels half the distance one way half the distance the other way so if this is 100 foot travel we really only need 50 feet of cable to meet halfway plus a small amount of cable to deal with the curve here and get back around

00:22:08 going going in the direction of travel so we estimate that roughly at 51 of the travel comparing that against the festoon if a festoon is going to do a hundred feet of travel it's going to need that cable all the way from point zero to point one hundred and it's also going to mean need a

00:22:25 little bit of additional slack so you can't have the cable pulled completely draw string tight over that 100 for travel there needs to be some slack to allow for some flexibility so that typically requires somewhere in the neighborhood of 110 of the travel worth of cable so 100 foot travel would require 110 feet of cable

00:22:47 so with the energy chain it's possible to run lower cost static cable up to that center termination point and then run 51 feet of more expensive continuous fluctuated cable inside of the system and then make your terminations at the hoist whereas with the festoon system you typically be running your lower cost static cable up to the zero point in the

00:23:07 travel and then you have 110 feet of that more expensive continuous flux rated cable one final note on the cable topic with igus a pre-populated systems are available direct from us it's something that we do every day we have an entire department devoted just to populating the energy chains with cables

00:23:26 as we saw in the the video that played pre-populated systems dramatically reduce the amount of installation time the system can be delivered in a cardboard box and a pallet on a spool for larger systems and simply unrolled into the trough and sometimes in case of it's a matter of minutes for smaller systems uh that it's ready to go to be

00:23:46 put into service with festoon systems pre-populated systems are not typical there are certain cases where festoons are supplied pre-populated it typically requires some special shipping arrangements um racking or transport fixtures it's a substantially more complicated process it starts to cut into the the cost and

00:24:05 the benefit of it uh the cost starts to eat into the benefits of of trying to facilitate a pre-populated system energy chain is is much easier to deal with that pre-populated system and reap the benefit of that installation time next up i will talk about some of the resources that we offer if uh

00:24:23 you're uh you've been watching the webinar and are interested in trying out the guide fest system in your facility think you may have a need for it we offer online cad files and configuration tools for the entire guide fast product family as well as all energy chains regardless of of their size so if it's something where

00:24:41 you're looking to configure this and want to see how it fits onto your crane we do have a full suite of 3d cad data we offer uh visits from our agus our representatives we do offer visits in all 50 states as well as canada mexico and globally we can conduct measurement surveys where if you have a system

00:25:00 where you would like to implement this technology you just don't have the time to deal with the measurements gather the information for us let us know we'll be happy to come in and take that work on for you we can identify cables as well if you don't know specifically exactly what electrical requirements you have you just have a spool of cable

00:25:17 that you pull off of to build we can serve we can help to identify those electrical requirements specify the right cables and design a complete system and provide a quilt we offer on-site installation service so if you have manpower issues on the service side we are able to offer an i guess team of people that can

00:25:37 come in install these systems directly onto the crane for you or if it's something where you do have a dedicated service team that has plenty of capacity they just may not uh have the know-how to deal with a new product like this we also offer on-site training where i guess personnel will will travel to your location they can work with your service personnel to

00:25:56 install the first one and train them on best practices so they're equipped to do subsequent systems and then one final thing that we offer if you are a crane manufacturer if you're producing cranes as part of your daily business and maybe have typically used festoon systems you're interested in the guide fest

00:26:11 system but maybe uh don't believe it enough to put it on a system that you're going to ship off and deliver to a customer we're happy to offer what we call a test drive system where we'll give you a free system that you can put either on your uh on an in-house crane or or a crane that's going to a local shop where you can monitor it

00:26:31 um and allow you to evaluate the performance of the guidepath system at no cost so we're happy to discuss opportunities for test drive systems wherever the case may be so if you feel that that may be a good fit for you please reach out and we'll be happy to discuss further and then finally just uh this this

00:26:50 presentation has been purely on guide fest which is devoted to some uh more medium distance travels with with the cable-filled packages towards the lighter side igus is certainly able to do much more than just the guide fast type and size applications if you've been watching this webinar and say it's good technology i

00:27:07 i like the energy chain i like the the benefits that it offers versus a festoon but my application is just a lot bigger than what these applications have been discussed thus far are we have a complete range of sizes and styles to deal with just about any application that you could think of we have a couple

00:27:25 application references here um of many that are some of our things that we've done on the larger side one being a taconite mine in minnesota which to our knowledge is the longest cable carrier travel uh in the usa at uh 1804 feet it's been in operation since uh 2009 at times reaching as low as negative 31 degrees fahrenheit in the

00:27:47 minnesota winters that's shown in the picture on the left-hand side the photo on the right is a project called the amherst project in belgium it uses the largest plastic cable carrier in the world which is the agus e-4350 carries a 12-inch diameter sludge hose for a dredging operation so as the dredging application is carried out the

00:28:06 mud the rocks the silt the sand is pumped up through that hose which is carried by that very large energy chain that you see in the two photos and in the center and on the right so that will uh conclude the webinar for today thank you guys for uh for for joining and listening you

CHANNELS

Guidefast: A Faster & Easier Alternative to Festoons

More From SAE Media Group

Tech Briefs

Tech Briefs

Tech Briefs

Motion Control & Automation Technology

Tech Briefs

Motion Control & Automation Technology

Tech Briefs

Motion Control & Automation Technology

Tech Briefs

Motion Control & Automation Technology

Aerospace & Defense Tech Briefs

Tech Briefs

Tech Briefs

Aerospace & Defense Tech Briefs

Tech Briefs

Motion Control Technology

Motion Design

Tech Briefs

Tech Briefs

NASA Spinoff

Tech Briefs

Motion Control & Automation Technology

Motion Control and Automation Technology INSIDER

Motion Control Technology

Tech Briefs

Motion Control & Automation Technology

Motion Control & Automation Technology

Motion Control Technology

Tech Briefs

Motion Design

Transcript