A truck crane with an aluminum boom is among the products that service truck manufacturer
Tim Davison, product manager with Stellar Industries Inc., holds a boom section of Stellar’s new aluminum crane, making its debut at the 2019 Work Truck Show
Stellar Industries Inc. introduced at the 2019 Work Truck Show in Indianapolis this March.
The company, based in Garner, Iowa, used proprietary extrusions and special welding techniques to manufacture the boom on the EC3200 crane, said senior product manager Tim Davison.
It’s the first time an aluminum crane has been in the market “in a long, long time,” Davison said. “There may have been a crane back in the ’70s that did. But we’re the only ones doing it right now.”
The aluminum enables a 30 percent weight savings compared with a steel model.
“We’ve gone from 730 pounds down to 500 pounds, so 230 pounds extra that a person is going to able to carry on their truck because of this crane,” Davison said.
The aluminum also resists corrosion, he added. The boom sections are anodized as well for further protection.
The extrusion process also enables the thickness to vary along the length of the boom, providing more strength where needed but also creating a void for the extension system cylinder.
“The beautiful thing”
Those hydraulic cylinders are still made of steel, as is the pedestal and rotation system for the crane.
“The beautiful thing is that we’re using steel where we need the structure where we need to have to have steel but we’re using aluminum where it makes sense and where we can do it,” Davison said.
Dissimilar metals need to be protected from one another to avoid galvanic or bimetallic corrosion. Stellar has a couple of ways of protecting the metals, although the company doesn’t doesn’t share what those techniques are. “But what we do share is that we know that they have to be protected and we protect it very well,” Davison said.
The EC3200 aluminum crane has 3,200 pounds of lifting capacity and 15 feet of horizontal reach.
Other features of the crane, as noted in a Stellar news release, include the following:
• a low-profile design for work in confined areas;
• a robust gear bearing rotation system with a high-strength steel ball bearing turntable gear, a high strength steel worm gear, and a cast steel worm gear housing;
• a planetary winch to ensure the winch will continue lifting until it reaches the full rated capacity; and
• 410 degrees of rotation with an integrated rotation stop to provide excellent performance while protecting wires and hoses from damage.
The crane is well-suited for municipal, oil and gas, and rental fleet sectors, the release noted.
Proprietary design
The designs of the extrusions are proprietary to Stellar, although the extrusions themselves are made by a fabricator that specializes in aluminum extrusions, Davison said. The rest of the machining of the booms and assembly of the cranes takes place at one of Stellar’s plants in Iowa.
Since aluminum is more expensive than steel, the EC3200 aluminum crane has a list price of about $460 more than its steel counterpart. That works out to $2 a pound on the weight saving. “So really it’s a negligible price increase to go to the aluminum brand,” Davison said.
At the Work Truck Show, the new aluminum crane was mounted on a Stellar TMax 30K body, the smallest of that series. The TMax 30K itself was mounted on a Ford F-550 gasoline-power chassis. However, Davison noted that the EC3200 could easily be installed on an F-350, which has an even smaller payload capacity.
“Saving 230 pounds really means something at that point because it’s going on a smaller truck,” Davison said.
As an electric-over-hydraulic crane, the EC3200 is best suited for smaller service bodies. “It is really designed for the Knapheide and Reading bodies with the crane reinforcement kits,” Davison said.
New handles and a lighter skid
Adam Oppermann of Stellar Industries Inc. demonstrates the new easy-to-use pull handles on the the company’s American Eagle brand drawers
Stellar also unveiled a new handle option for its American Eagle brand aluminum drawer sets as well as an aluminum version of the LubeMate by American Eagle lube skid.
In addition to a standard T handle on its drawer sets, a pull handle is now available on aluminum drawer sets only. It’s available in the 500-pound capacity heavy-duty drawer sets and 250-pound capacity light-weight aluminum sets.
Another recent innovation is individual light bars in each of the drawers.
“Historically in the work trucks the compartment lights have light in here,” said Adam Oppermann, a product manager with Stellar. “But if you get in a really dark condition and you pull out that drawer, it’s dark. What this does is no matter which one you’re working with, you always have that light down in the bottom of the drawer so they can see the tools and everything else they need to.”
The aluminum LubeMate lube skid offers a 30 percent weight reduction — or 300 pounds less than the 1,000 pound steel version, said Jason Vertin, an assistant product manager.
“Industry is in a really weight-conscious environment,” Vertin said. “They always want to downsize, downsize, downsize.”
LubeMate has been custom-building aluminum lube skids for about five years. “But this is our first standard product offering,” Vertin said.