Laguna Crane Services Employs Straightpoint Load Cells | Industry News

Laguna Crane Services of Texas reports it is using Straightpoint force measurement, load monitoring and suspended weighing load cells on a variety of projects from small industrial applications to those involving large mobile and crawler cranes with multiple chain falls.

Laguna provides training, inspection, service and parts for many different lifting and moving technologies. Owner Jerry Lopez said the Straightpoint load cells allows the company to monitor the pick points of dynamic loads while they are being moved and relay the information 100% wirelessly to a PC.

“We started using load cells about 10 years ago; they were all hard-wired back then,” he said. “The wireless capability has made it much safer, while data logging has made the process look very professional; it’s a massive improvement on the system which used to record information on a small paper roll. I especially like the capability of being able to capture a pull or load test on a graph as proof for the customers and their records.”

Laguna Crane Services uses load cells to verify the weight of the components it uses for load tests and also employs them in proof testing. In many cases it is too expensive or logistically challenging to transport weights to a job site so a load cell is used in conjunction with a crane to verify the weight of a component that a customer might have in their own yard.

“On one standout application we rigged up the load cells on each corner of a drilling rig and used them to monitor the pull on each end while we skidded the rig over several feet,” Lopez said. “Using this method saved the driller a significant amount of money because they didn’t have to disassemble the rig—just disconnect it, move any obstacles safely out of the way and skid the whole rig derrick before hooking everything back up and drilling again.”