Finally dawned on me why my boom angle was off so often

I was in the cab of my Liebherr LTM 1050 last Wednesday and it just hit me. I had been setting my bubble level on the stick without checking if the machine itself was level first. One simple level check on the deck plate saved me from chasing bad angles all afternoon. Who else made this boneheaded mistake starting out?

2 comments

2 Comments

jade477d ago

...and honestly I'm not sure it's that big of a deal. I've been running cranes for about 15 years and I still check my boom angle by eye more than the bubble level. The bubble level is just a tool, not the final answer. If your machine is a few degrees off level, that's going to throw the angle off a little, but in most pick situations it's not going to make or break the job. Maybe I'm being lazy but I feel like people overthink this stuff. If the load feels right, the angle is close enough. Your mileage may vary, but chasing perfect angles on a rough jobsite never seemed worth the headache to me.

blair_davis507d ago

Respectfully, I gotta disagree here. I've seen too many near misses on site from guys who thought they had a good feel for the angle when they were actually a solid five degrees off. That kind of error might not flip the truck, but it can absolutely shift the center of gravity on a heavy pick and put unexpected stress on the crane. A couple degrees might not matter for a light load on flat ground, but it matters a lot when you are working close to your chart limit or on uneven terrain. The feel thing works until it doesn't, and that's the problem.