Bushman Equipment, a manufacturer of custom-engineered material handling solutions, recently shipped the largest upender in company history. The unit was shipped to a new 350,000 sq. ft. plant built by Mitsubishi Electric Power Products, Inc. in Memphis, TN. The upender will be used by Mitsubishi to handle components of the electric power transformers it produces—the largest of which weighs up to 500 tons.
The contract awarded to Bushman called for the design and build of an 80 metric ton (176,370 lb) capacity upender. Bushman application engineer and project manager Jeff Henning said, “We have built bigger capacity units before, but this one is by far the largest physical size and heaviest unit Bushman has ever built—standing over 28 ft tall and weighing 154,000 lbs.”
The upender is unique in that it must support a 110,000 lb transformer coil that rests on a cantilevered hanger that is bolted to the loading platform. “This creates a completely different force distribution from a normal upender and that really drove up the weight”, said project engineer Marty Schoenecker.
All Bushman employees in front of the Mitsubishi upender.
After Mitsubishi personnel visited Bushman to conduct and sign off on a successful Factory Acceptance Test, the upender was dismantled and a caravan of four flatbed semis delivered it to the plant site in Memphis. A Bushman subcontractor was on hand to reassemble the machine.
The upender is over 28 ft tall when fully upright.
