Aiming high with compressed air

“Only the rail turns the ladder into an arrester system,” says Florian Brei, explaining the ladder set for climbing wind turbines. At the Hailo Wind Systems plant, Brei and his colleague Ivan Antic attach the arrester rail to finished aluminum ladders. This is indispensable in terms of safety: the service technicians use the rail to secure themselves when climbing towers at dizzying heights.

Hailo Wind Systems is one of the global market and technology leaders for professional access and climbing technology solutions in the wind power industry. At the Kalteiche site in Haiger, Hesse, many thousands of kilometers of ladders and a four-digit number of service lifts are manufactured each year. In order to be able to experience the products “live”, employees are regularly allowed to climb the 18-meter-high training tower at the company’s own training center. Brei has also already tried out the climbing protection system there himself. “The height makes many hesitate at first, but I didn’t mind,” he says.

The trained bricklayer has been working in manufacturing at Hailo Wind Systems since January 2014. He has since become a foreman and is involved in projects to improve work processes: He has been involved in the introduction of the EXPRESSO BalanceLift system, which has been facilitating work in rail assembly since the fall of 2021, from the very beginning. Brei and his colleagues tested the balancer, which is powered by compressed air, extensively in practice until everything fit after several adjustments. “As users, we were able to have a direct influence on the product design,” explains the installer enthusiastically.

The result: a mechanical gripper with an up/down control button as a load handling device for effortless handling of the arrester systems. The rope balancer and gripping tool are suspended from the BalanceRail surface crane system, which in turn is mounted on the hall ceiling. The floor space below can be used without restriction.

After Brei and Antic have completed the rail installation, the arrester system, which is up to 5.88 meters long, has to be transferred from the workbench to a stack. To ensure that this can be done efficiently, the balancer helps from this point on. With the gripper, Brei can grasp the ladder and maneuver it precisely through the space thanks to Vario control – in completely natural motion sequences and without power. While he safely places the 23-kilo load on the stack, his colleague Antic has already prepared the next work step.

The BalanceLift project is a true testament to its time, as the need for a handling aid became apparent during the first Corona waves in 2020. “We had a very high sickness rate at that time, so at times entire shifts had to be cancelled,” recalls Brei. The reason for the loss of production: a single person could not handle the rail assembly by then.

Since the introduction of the balancer, all the work steps can be carried out by one person without suffering back and joints. “But that is the exception,” says Florian Brei. “Normally, rail assembly continues to be manned by two people.” The EXPRESSO BalanceLift system now guarantees production and planning reliability in rail assembly and increases the efficiency of operations.