Orion 1 - Crane Failure - Rostock, Germany

Moreover, where was the hook finally found?
Was it catapulted through the barge’s bottom to the seabed?

Hard to say. Where does 3rd party hook end and Liebherr begin?

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Anything more than dime store novelties from China that includes their “steel” scares the bejeezus out of me at work.

I always make sure I stay out of the line of fire, more especially with their products.

Regardless of the metallurgy of manufacture, you’d assume there was a proof load test of the hook/block assembly before it left the factory. This was meant to be an overload test of the crane itself, not the hook. I also wonder what their before/after NDT protocol is for those heavy lifts.

And I’m a little surprised there’s no anti-recoil mechanism for the crane. I’ve mostly only worked with hydraulic based hoisting systems, but if that sort of snap back can occur at losing just half the rated load that seems like a massive failure mode tolerance.

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I would guess that the black part is 3rd Party, the rest made by Liebherr. (But that is just a guess)

This is a picture copied from another forum. The hook is on the deck of the barge slings still attached…

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The crane hook was designed by Ropeblock B.V., a Dutch company:

They say they outsourced the actual manufacturing to an (so far) unnamed 3rd Party (or should that be, 4th Party?):


Nothing said about China anywhere, but don’t let that stop you from speculating.

But it doesn’t rule it out yet either. From their website:

All Ropeblock products are assembled in The Netherlands, where we also have our own state of the art test facilities.

Attorneys will be busy with this one. Key word is"Assembled" as I think you highlighted.

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It doesn’t “rule out” any place.
Could part of the hook assembly have been forged in the US?
It cannot be ruled out.

Yup, that was the point I was making.

Apparently state of the art now is Liebherr’s 5,000 tonne crane.

Not anymore.

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Yeah, from the surrealist school of the art.

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RopeBlock-“Smart gets you further up schitts creek”

That makes sense. Here’s a foreshadowing. Curiously enough it’s not titled Crane Flying To Bits.

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I prefer this guy, he did surrealism 400 years before it was a thing.

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image

Me likey…

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Would that be our freaky friend Herr Bosch?

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