The Queensland-built Mobicon straddle carrier becomes a smart alternative to a forklift for housing supplier Unitised Building
December 15, 2010
The Queensland-built Mobicon straddle carrier has become
a smart alternative to a forklift for housing supplier Unitised Building.
Mobicon technology has already made a name for itself when it comes to moving containers around.
But now a specially-designed Mobicon is playing an important role in the operations of Unitised Building, a company which has taken the Victorian building scene by storm this year, resulting in a revolution in apartment and home-building techniques.
While housing modules are being manufactured at the Unitised Building facility at Brooklyn in Melbourne’s west, works such as foundations and concrete slabs are simultaneously being carried out on-site.
Unitised Building’s factory-built units – complete with windows and doors, as well as bathroom and kitchen fittings and floor coverings – are transported to prepared sites and simply bolted into position like a giant meccano set, halving the building time.
Company Mobicon operator, Harry Antoniou says the factory needs a straddle carrier that could be adjusted to pick up and move as well as load and unload, various size modules.
“Our modules can vary in length from 10-15 metres, and up to five metres wide and four metres high,” Antoniou says.
“It all depends on what kind of building design the customer wants, so the modules can vary quite considerably in size, even in the one development project.
“Actually, it’s quite amazing what the Mobicon can do in the very confined spaces in our factory,” he adds. “And there’s no way a forklift could do what has to be done – not with some modules up to five metres wide.”
Antoniou says the Mobicon’s independent twin tower system, with its eight-wheel independent steering capability, is “unbelievable”.
“It’s great how the Mobicon can handle these modules of various sizes so easily,” he says.
“And because of a special dual-twist locking mechanism, developed especially for Unitised Building, it can virtually spin around on itself and move the module virtually anywhere in the factory and onto trucks ready for delivery to the building site.”
Unitised Building’s architectural firm principal Nonda Katsalidis first visited the Brisbane factory where the Mobicon straddle carriers are manufactured on Melbourne Cup Day in 2009.
“The Mobicon straddle carrier had already become a success story over the past decade, with almost 100 units manufactured for use in the general container movement, transport and logistics area,” says Mobicon Systems inventor and Managing Director Tom Schults.
So when Nonda Katsalidis saw the Mobicon in action he immediately realised its potential for the logistics operations required by his pre-fab building
modules.
Schults, who along with his engineers had already developed a specially modified Mobicon for the US Navy’s Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) program, set about designing a new specialised machine for Unitised Building in Melbourne.
“We had already developed the expandable beam concept to handle different load sizes for the US Navy, but now we needed a new concept of an automatic leveller as well, which would avoid twisting the building modules as they were being moved and loaded,” Schults recalls.
The special Mobicon unit has been operation at Unitised Building in Melbourne since June this year.