- Finding the right hoist for your lifting application
is vital to ensuring the investment that you make
is a long-lasting one.
And in this video, we're gonna break down
the NER 3-phase electric chain hoists.
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- Welcome back to the lifting and rigging channel.
My name is Devon, and today we're gonna talk about
the NER 3-phase electric chain hoist.
Now joining me in this breakdown
is Eric Shankle from Harrington.
Eric, thank you for joining me today, sir.
- Thank you for having me Devon.
- And I like to start by just having
you give me some background on you.
You know, what drew you to the lifting industry?
How long have you been part of Harrington
and maybe even unpack a little bit about Harrington,
who they are, what they do and how long they've been around.
- I've been in the rigging industry for a little
over four years now.
I began my career with Harrington in 2016.
What drew me to the industry,
was a chance to learn a completely different field,
a completely different industry.
I was kinda stagnant in the industry I was previously in
for over 13 years.
This was a great opportunity for me to learn
from the ground up brand new material.
And it's been interesting ever since.
I learned something new every single day
I'm in this industry.
Harrington hoist has been around for,
I believe 154 years is where we're at now,
providing customers solutions for their lifting needs.
- That's incredible.
Over 150 years is a heck of a pedigree of time
and experience and industry expertise.
So that's really cool because now when we go into this
when we start talking about
what this system was designed for
and how it works with the end-users in mind,
you've got over 150 years of people saying,
"Hey, this is what works.
"This is what doesn't, let's refine this,
"let's get this going."
So I'm really excited, so let's go ahead and dive into this.
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Can you address what problem
that NER 3-phase electric train hoist was built to solve?
- Sure.
I wanted to say there was necessarily a problem specifically
that it was designed to build to solve.
In 1998, we rolled out our first series of NER
which would have been called the NER 1.
And with the market in mind,
we were trying to create the most durable, efficient,
and user-friendly hoist that we could.
From that time from 1998 up until 2008,
the market changed a little bit
and there was a demand for dual speed VFD hoists.
So in 2008, we decided to roll out our second series,
the NER 2, which is what we currently have available.
The NER 2 all of our dual speed hoist come standard
with a variable frequency drive.
In addition to that, we worked on a fail, safe break.
We changed our braking mechanism from a pool rotor brake
which was in our NER 1 series,
to our guardian smart brake, which relies on current.
So when there's no current going to the hoist
the break will not disengage.
So it will provide a safer solution
if there's ever a power outage.
- So if the power goes out,
it'll hold whatever it's holding in the air
there will be no drop or anything of the load.
- Correct.
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- I was thinking about the end user
and the person who's maybe, they just got hired on,
they're starting to learn the ropes in the industry
maybe they're not that comfortable,
how easy is it for somebody new to get to use this system,
the NER 3 phase electric chain hoist?
- It's much easier than any contactor type of a hoist
with a variable frequency drive.
It's a very smooth operation.
So initially when you're starting your lift
and beginning your pull, if there's a contact
the hoist will jog.
With the VFD provides a much smoother solution
and it will have much softer stops and starts.
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- So as far as adjusting it,
is that something that any user can do
or is that something like they need to reach out
to Harrington just say, "Hey, this is what we were doing.
"And this isn't quite what we wanted.
"We wanna dial it up or down.
"Can you help us?"
Or can they do it on their own?
- They can do it on their own, absolutely.
It's under the cover.
As long as they have a man lift
to get to the height of the hoist,
take the control cover off
and the VFD is right there visible for you.
We actually have a YouTube videos out there
to help in the field if somebody ever has trouble
trying to adjust it,
we have an instructional video on YouTube.
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- So switching gears a little bit and talking about
longevity of use.
Harrington has been around for 150 years,
they've really got these systems dialed in.
You even said that this is the second iteration
of the NER 3-phase electric train hoist.
What's the life cycle now of these systems?
If they're used properly in the right applications
they're being maintained and treated well,
how long should these systems last end-user?
- We try to get to market with the hoist
at a 10 plus year marker for lives.
But in a good testament to the longevity of our hoist is
we still have a number of our NER 1 series hoists out there,
which again, we rolled out in 1998.
We still manufacture parts for those
because they're still usable in the field.
2008 we rolled out the second series
and there's still plenty of those out there
in the field as well.
So we're already past that 12 year mark
for a lot of these hoists.
So we're still waiting to see,
what the actual life cycle is on these things.
With the new NER 2 series,
we try to get them to go through 2 million cycles.
The average hoist life is about 1,600,000 cycles.
So we're trying to make sure
we get past the 2 million cycle mark.
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- Where do you see these systems working the best
to where they're lasting the longest
because it's exactly what they were designed to solve for.
- They fit great in manufacturing,
but also think of us for industrials.
Well, these things are IP 55 gasket lines,
so they can take extreme conditions
as far as dust and water.
So mills, foundries, pulp and paper manufacturing,
automotive, those type of applications are great fits.
For more demanding applications
there also indoor and outdoor rated.
So you can hang them on a gym crane outside.
A lot of your nastiest environments
if I can say that dusty, dirty, wet conditions.
When people aren't familiar with Harrington,
I as a sales person, we as a company,
when we try to break into a new end user
and it's a bad environment,
we always tell them to give us their worst application.
Give us your most dirty, wet, any type of constant use,
let's place our first hoist there
and I want you to see how this will operate
under these nasty conditions.
And once we do that, we can convert the customer
over to Harrington pretty easily.
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- I know that in some other industries,
like the salt water is a big impact.
Some high explosive industries,
there's just certain things that just don't work
in certain applications.
Is there any places where these probably
aren't a good fit for some companies?
- So the two that you've just mentioned,
let's start with salt water.
We're great for any type of salt water atmosphere.
We do a lot with ship manufacturing
sold lot of manual products in those applications
but we can also play some 3-phase hoists as well.
So it can keep out the salt water
because of the IP 55 rating.
However, sometimes that does limit the life of a hoist
but we will still outperform the competition.
The one area we do not have a fit yet
and it is something I would love to see,
is explosion proof.
We do not have a 3-phase electric chain hoist
that is explosion proof.
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- So I wanna go into maintenance
and repairability of these systems.
I know it's a contained system
there's not a whole lot of maintenance required
for the most part.
But stuff breaks down, stuff gets old
stuff gets beaten up in the track.
Can you tell me
what the maintenance and repairability is like
for these types of systems?
- So with every hoist you purchase
through Harrington hoist,
we send out to you the owner's manual.
Every single box will include an owner's manual.
Depending on what hoist you buy,
it will tell you the maintenance,
how to determine a maintenance schedule.
First thing you need to do is
try to determine what type of service
your hoist is operating under.
There are three different categories.
There's normal service, which is defined as
operation with randomly distributed loads
within the capacity limit,
or uniform loads of less than 65% of rated capacity
and operation of no longer than 25% of the time,
that would be classified as normal service.
The next category would be heavy service,
which is operation within the rated load capacity
which exceeds normal service.
And then lastly is severe service, which involves normal
or heavy service with abnormal operating conditions
such as weather, atmospheric conditions or continual use.
Once you determine what classification you are
that's when you can determine your frequency of inspections.
Now, there are two different types of inspections
there's frequent inspections and also periodic inspections.
So the difference will be a frequent inspection
is conducted by either an operator
or other designated personnel at the location.
For normal service,
you would conduct these inspections on a monthly basis,
heavy service, you would conduct them
on a weekly to monthly basis and severe service,
you would conduct daily to weekly.
Now periodic inspection is performed by a designated person.
So we partner with companies such as Mazzella,
who offers these type of inspections.
So for a normal service,
you would conduct these inspections yearly,
heavy service, you would do them semi-annually
and under severe service, you would do quarterly.