crane operator
Senior Member
made in china, saving a couple of dollars always costs more money
Probably not chinese. Liebherr is german and builds almost everything in house. They source a few things out of house, but its stuff like starters from bosch, transmissions from ZF, that sort of things. They own their own engine company, and steel cast their own counterweights. I don't know if they build their own hook blocks, but I would be surprised if they didn't, because of how much of their own stuff they make.
Everything I've been around with liebherr is top notch stuff.
Aren't hooks and any other lifting devices supposed to have a 4 to 1 safety factor?
You're exactly right dave, its supposed to have a safety factor. Some items are 3 to 1, some stuff is 5 to 1.
My guess is a engineering error on the safety factor of the hook block, and it sure looks like a complete failure of the attachment between hook and block. All the load hooks I've been around use a threaded head holding in the swivel bearing.
I don't know where there would be a test bed to test the hook to 15,000 tons, that's some pull.