Financial Report

I have collected together available costs for the materials involved with the crane. This includes the screws and bolts, the I-beam and the square bar stock. All cost estimates are approximate values applied to existing products with the nearest possible measurements.

• Stainless Steel M10 Bolts - £28.36 per 100 (ScrewFix)
  
  

• Stainless Steel M10 Nuts - £12.38 per 100 (ScrewFix)

• Aluminium Alloy Current Cost - $2005 / Tonne (London Metal Exchange)
  This aluminium alloy would be used for the connection block attaching the legs components together and the feet etc. The connection block would most likely be sand casted for the one-off batch of 100 whilst the other components could either be, again sand casted or machined from block or plate material.

• Aluminium Alloy I-Beam - $194.70 (Onlinemetals.com)
  The costs for this are in relation to an 84” aluminium alloy 6062 I-beam when in reality, our proposal beam is aluminium alloy 7075 at a length of 86.6”.

• Aluminium Square Bar Stock - £21.52 / 1000mm (Metals 4 U)
  The profile dimensions involved with this cost are similar. There is approximately 9500mm of bar stock needed per crane (excluding scrap needed for facing off ends etc). This equates to £215.20 per crane.

• Winch - £215
• Trolley - £60
  

When adding costs i considered labour:

• 2 Assembly/Test Technicians - £15000 - £18000 salary.


• 1 Manufacturing Engineer (initially) – They would be needed initially to set-up the production area and ensure that the assembly build process moves along quickly and efficiently with minimal scrap. The costs for this would be for depended on how many hours it takes for them to set-up the production area.


• Quality engineering – They would be needed to ensure a consistency of quality is achieved throughout the batch. I would estimate they would check the critical dimensions of 1 crane for every 10 cranes manufactured throughout the batch of 100.
  
• Stores and Goods In/Out – To help deliver the finished cranes and to store and catalogue the materials ready for manufacture and assembly.

Packaging and delivery is also taken into account.

I have also added a small profit and an extra cost to accomodate for any margin of error that may and will likely occur. It is always best to accomodate for this margin of error for such cases and a bad batch ths extra materials needed or if any raw materials/bought components go up in price.

When considering all these factors i would again have to say that my initial cost proposal of £2600 per crane if a safe estimate.

Mechanics and Calculations

During development of our gantry crane many calculations and formulae were taken into account. Without using these formulae it could not be certified for prototyping. We wanted to make sure the crane fit the required specification within a safe margin and was suitable for the task at hand. Below are the developmental calculations and figures.

Final Crane Design

The Final Design

The final design is similar to a gantry crane that would be seen in a workplace/workshop. It has the typical I-beam along the top with two supporting legs to spread the load evenly. However, our design is not just a simple gantry crane. Various other design aspects have been included to incorporate as many selling points as possible. The other design aspects are:

• A-Frame
• Collapsibility
• Unique Folding I Beam
• Stabilising Leg

A Frame

The Crane will be used in a very rough environment (i.e. a disaster area) so after a lot of team discussions and designing it was decided that more support was needed. This was to strengthen the whole system as well as aid on the rough ground environment. The A-frame is simply a bar going across which can easily be removed in the dismantling stages to allow for an easy transfer.

I Beam

A standard I-Beam on a gantry crane is one long piece of metal. This is very problematic for use. The length of the beam would have to be 4.4m long so we could cover the brief. As well as this, the I-beam would be very heavy regardless what material it could be made out of. After much deliberation a decision was taken to split the I-beam into two pieces. We would have 2 pieces at a length 2.2m each. Once this decision was taken a suitable joining solution was needed so that the cane could be the required length.

Hinge Design

The hinge has been designed to allow the I-beam to fold in half. The hinge works across the bottom of the I-beam. It has been placed on the bottom so that when the winch is placed at the centre of the beam the two ends of the I-beam will be forcing on to each other (see diagram).

Stabilising Leg

A third stabilising leg has been added to the standard gantry cranes. This stabilising leg cannot be used on its own. It is only there to stop the sideward movement if any occurs. This was placed there on the assumptions if something was to go wrong how could it be stop from happening?. As can be see from the diagram bellow, a sideways force would cause the crane to start working in a position that has not been designed for. All the Stabilising leg just rests on the ground and takes some tension and if the crane happen to topple over the leg will catch it.

This is one of the most important features of the crane as it keeps the people who are under the berried rubble safe (i.e. no more falling rubble to land on top of them) and it also vitally keeps the rescue works safe.

Collapsibility

As part of the brief, it must fit on top of or in the back of a Land Rover 4x4. This places a huge restriction on how the product will be designed. For instance to take the rubble 4m from the point of lift you could have a 5m long beam (ignoring weight). But this does pose a problem. How will it be transported? Even though they are used in disaster areas there still needs to be safe procedures in place to transport the parts.

Because of this tight constriction on packing space it was decided that each part will be able to be taken into smaller parts so that it can be easily fitted into the back of a 4x4. Each leg folds down away with the I-beam connectors also being remove. As stated before the I-beam can be folded into two pieces of 2.2m in length. This does not directly fit in the back of a land rover but can be placed on the roof. The material chosen allows for a light I-beam that can be lifted.

Engineering Drawings an be found here(please click link)

Advantages

The advantaged of this crane design is that is very flexible. Each leg have the own adjustments allowing for the actual crane to be used on uneven ground (key in disaster areas). The key with gantry cranes and not making them fail is to not allow the I-beam to move from a perfect horizontal position. Our designs allows for the I-beam to remain horizontal.

The stabilising leg does not directly take a large amount of the force – hence why is smaller than the rest of the design but it plays a crucial role if the any extra external forces are applied while lifting a 1 tonne load.

The folding beam can be dismantled if necessary so it can be carried over a 100m length (assuming there are not enough people to carry it) or be placed on the top of a Land Rover.

Disadvantage

The I-beam has to be kept horizontal so each leg needs to have the own adjustment range. This increase the cost of the crane and the amount of setting up/down time taken. If this could be removing it would allow for a much shorter assembling time.

The main disadvantage of this design is the time taken to construct the crane and each time the load changes position the crane will need to be changed. It would take a long time to get up and working but as with everything once it has been completed a few times this could be drastically decreased.

Further Developments

As it is the crane would cost around £2600 (on initial calculations) so a definite further development would be to try and reduce this cost. Currently this would take it out of running with Third World Countries as the cost may be deemed to high. A couple of ways this could happen is to reduce the cost of the material – this may be difficult as it would require the price to change of 7075 Aluminium or alternatively the design could be slimed to the nearest smallest standard size that would work.

Conclusion

Over all the each design aspect has been carefully taken into considerations and calculations run where possible and we believe it is the best design that is suited to disaster areas.

Background Costing Research

Whilst trying to figure out the rough cost i should be aiming for i considered several factors:

• The crane would need to be as cheap as possible without reducing the quality overmuch.
• The crane should be no more expensive than our competitors unless there are features on our crane that are specific to this design only and thus making it worth the extra money to the customers.
• Our main target audience is relief aid organisations and governments where there is a high risk of natural disasters such as earthquakes etc. Generally speaking, this type of customer will have minimal financial resources available and so the crane will need to be cheap enough to accomodate this.
• Whilst deciding the material, the costs involved will need to be considered as the better quality, stronger/lightweight materials will be more expensive.

With these sorts of factors in mind, i decided to research our competitors and see how much they are selling their cranes for. I managed to find 5 gantry crane companies both located in England and in America. Their selling prices ranged from £2000 to £3500 approximately (this does not include delivery costs). This tells me, that i would ideally be aiming to be in the cheaper half of this range but not the cheapest as we have an added market advantage of being one of the few cranes on the market that has a high level of portability.

Suitability of material

Now with the calculations completed I can compare the forces which the material will be under with its yield stress.

To recap the values for Aluminium 7075:

Specific Density: 2810 Kg/cb.m

Youngs Modulus: 72 Gpa
Yield Stress: 145 x10^6 pa
USD/LB: 0.97

The calculated stresses &forces:

Max stress experienced: 69 MPa

Max deflection: 0.015 m

As it can be seen the 69 Mpa is well below the materials yield stress of 145 MPa therefore this material will not deform when it is fully loaded which is very desirable. It will also not deform when the beam is at its max deflection as aluminium 7075 can deflect 9-10% before plastic deformation.

Therefore Aluminium 7075 is perfect for this crane as it is light, strong and reasonably priced.

Coating

Aluminium 7075 can also be easily anodized which increases the thickness of the naturally occurring oxidized layer. This layer increases corrosion and wear resistance, as well as creating a good base layer for paint primers and glues than bare metal. This is useful as the crane has to be transported, carried and repeatedly put up and taken down. This would mean that there would be a lot of wear on the crane and it might also be bumped by debris in the disaster zone.

Conclusion

Our product merges versatility,utility, effectiveness and reliability, into one stable disaster zone crane. Its over engineered features and design compliment its harsh surroundings and will be an effective tool in future earthquake prone areas. Its ability to be carried further through use of modern materials and design mean that the crane can be deployed faster in worsening conditions to the task of saving lives. Its simplicity means any relief worker, locals, or officials can use and operate this crane.

Its Compact Gantry crane design enables it to be comfortably folded , stored and transported on any pick up or 4X4, but also here at the team HQ innovation also takes a priority and the crane, comes with stabilising legs as standard, the first one of its kind.

Do not be fooled by other companies , half attempted efforts, fancy swivel cranes and non complete cranes. Not only are they ineffective , simply most do not work.

Our crane has been tested numerically for reliability throughout, it is not going to break at rated loads or buckle under ever increasing stresses. This is a quality assured product.

Even its price , is very comparable to other companies unrealistic "prices", for our price you acquire space age materials and design for less.

Overall by buying with us,you are getting an effective, value for money product that will serve with pride in disaster relief zones.

Engineering Drawings

These are the engineering drawings of all the different parts of the crane. Dimensions are included.