Australian crane specialist RAR Group has put a new Grove GMK6400 crane on one of the largest wind farms in New South Wales. The Capital Wind Farm job saw the crane used to maintain gearboxes on a number of the 67 turbines at the 140.7-MW facility.

?The GMK6400 was the perfect choice for this project because it has the best lifting capacity of any six-axle crane, combined with small outrigger dimensions and a fast set-up,? said Andrew Bodman, Director, RAR Group. ?All told this meant it had capacity, speed and size advantages over alternatives.?

The 400 tonne capacity GMK6400 has a 60 m main boom and up to 79 m of luffing jib available, giving it a maximum possible tip height of 136 m. It can handle loads out to a maximum radius of 96 m and comes with the optional self-rigging Mega Wing Lift attachment for additional capacity.

On the Capital Wind Farm project, RAR Group configured the crane with 49 m of main boom and 43 m of luffing jib together with the Mega Wing Lift attachment. The GMK6400 was used for five lifts per day replacing the 24 tonne gearboxes on turbines at a height of 85 m.

In addition to the wind farm project, RAR has used the GMK6400 in a variety of other applications, including erecting and dismantling tower cranes, installing precast concrete panels, and placing 11 tonne precast concrete panels at 60 m radius on a data centre construction in Canberra.

Established in 1993, the Canberra-based RAR Group offers mobile cranes, tower cranes and rigging crews in Canberra, Sydney and throughout New South Wales. Other Manitowoc cranes in RAR Group?s fleet include Potain tower crane models MCT 85F5, MC175B, MC310 K12, MCT385 and MR160c.