Fki Industries, Inc.

George J Bertels

Paul E Redelman

A storage and retrieval crane system that includes a tower having a pair of spaced columns and a tower drive mechanism for moving the tower horizontally along a floor between storage racks. A carriage is coupled to a carriage drive mechanism for vertical movement between the columns, and a shuttle is coupled to a shuttle drive mechanism on the carriage for moving the shuttle horizontally from the carriage in directions lateral to direction of movement of the tower along the floor. At least one of the drive mechanisms, and preferably all of the drive mechanisms, include primary and secondary drive arrangements, and facility for selectively alternately connecting one or the other of the primary and secondary drive arrangements to drive the tower, carriage or shuttle. Thus, in the preferred embodiment of the invention, each of the drive mechanisms is fully redundant, so that machine drive may be switched from primary to secondary mechanisms in the event of failure without significant downtime or loss of production.

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Troy, MI, United States of America

George J Bertels