When it comes to crane systems, cable carriers are almost always exclusively purchased as pre-assembled systems, or ReadyChains®. Customers profits from in many ways: the system is delivered directly to the installation site, saving considerable time. Moreover, igus® can take care of the installation itself, virtually eliminating the potential for errors. igus® has experience from installing ReadyChain® in a ship-to-shore crane application in Malaysia with a travel distance of nearly 1,500 ft, to name just one example.

Rol-E-Chain cable carriers from igus are ideal for crane applications, as they can cope with travels over 2,600 ft (800 m) and speeds up to 33 ft/s (10 m/s). Additional drives or controls are not required and the weight is lower than any conventional crane cable management system. Crane builders can save drive power for trolleys and system weight for crane girders.

Another project in the Netherlands involved retrofitting a ship unloader. The travel distance of the carriage amounted to 348 ft (106 m) at a speed of 13 ft/s (4 m/s). The weight of the cables alone amounts to over 33 lb/ft (50 kg/m), but this was no problem for the igus® cable carrier system used.

For a major ship-to-shore major project, igus® also developed and installed a system analysis tool. The remote condition monitoring system monitors the displacement forces of the cable carriers and helps to prevent damage and stoppages. Pressure and tensile strength data are compared four times per second with a value fixed individually in advance. In case an error occurs, alarm signals are transmitted immediately and automatically via SMS and e-mail. They can then be analyzed at any required location. Stored data can be retrospectively analyzed for three months. The system opens up lots of potential in terms of maintenance and error diagnosis. So far, the PPDS condition monitoring system is only implemented on crane drives and not trolley drives, but this is simply a matter of time.