LOSCAM

Cranes used for safety critical operation are often fitted with load monitoring systems. These are used to ensure the maximum design limit is never exceeded. Such systems use trips that are present to trigger an alarm or stop the crane lifting gear when the load reaches a pre-set limit (usually some just value above the crane safe working load). To ensure safe operation a crane load-monitoring system must have its calibration and trip alarm operation verified at intervals. The crane load monitor calibration is carried out with the use of a traceable calibration weights. However, although this is no substitute for calibration with traceable weights, this method does have some problems:

1. When using weights, the trip alarm functions can only be verified by taking the crane over its safe-working load.
2. During normal operation (in the absence of calibration weights) there is no way to verify the crane load monitor calibration and trip operation.

These problems may be overcome by employing a separate system that can be used to apply a simulated load to enable verification of calibration and alarm trip functions. This takes the form of the Procon Engineering ‘Load Cell Offset Signal Conditioning Amplifier’ or LOSCAM. The LOSCAM is able to inject an offset signal (load offset) to simulate the crane lifting a real load. The load offset can be calibrated to exceed the crane SWL to enable load monitor alarm trips to be tested. Additionally, the LOSCAM is able to independently amplify and scale the load monitoring load cell signal to produce an isolated analogue signal suitable for connection to external monitoring data acquisition systems