Heavy lifting solution up to 85 tons!

World’s largest vacuum lifter is designed and built by Aerolift. The lifter is used to lift the heavy steel plates up to 85 tons of the wind turbine tower.

Originally the vacuum lifter was designed to lift steel plates up to 24 meters and 70 tons. The design consisted of a base frame that could be extended with extensions on both outer ends. Five years later the customer requested an upgrade to also be able to lift the heaviest steel plates in the factory up to 85 tons. For the upgrade, we engineered two extra extensions which can be placed between the base frame and the first extensions. Without any extensions, the vacuum lifter can lift steel plates up to 16,4 meters.

Additional safety features

Due to the extreme heavy load, we have decided in consultation with the customer to engineer each suction pad as a separate vacuum device with its own vacuum tank. If one suction pad should fail, this will have no effect on the other suction pads. The operator will receive a warning of the malfunction, but the heavy load of 85 tons will stay safely attached. This is one of our additional safety features for extreme loads or circumstances.

Base frame (2013)

• Length: 15,000 mm
• Width: 2,400 mm
• Height: 3,600 mm
• Dead weight: 18 tons

Extension 1 (2013)

• Length: 23,000 mm
• Width: 2,400 mm
• Height: 3,600 mm
• Dead weight: 25 tons

Extension (2019)

• Length: 31,000 mm
• Width: 2,400 mm
• Height: 3,600 mm
• Dead weight: 32 tons