The lift happens
above molten metal.
A steel or aluminum plant runs the hottest, most unforgiving floor in heavy industry — a dropped load near a furnace or a ladle isn't a damaged part, it's a molten-metal event. The equipment is massive : furnace shells, ladles, rolling-mill stands, casters, smelter pots. We engineer that lift — molten-metal-proximity-mapped, load-path-first, sealed before mobilization. The plant runs the metallurgy ; we get the heavy thing into place. Aluminum, steel, primary metals — Quebec's industrial backbone.
ASME B30.5
Mobile crane standard, methodology-grade
Z150
Quebec lift-plan code applied to every engagement
24 h
Emergency lift plans — mills + smelters Canada-wide
0
Hot-floor lifts without a sealed plan in hand
Six exposures on the hot floor.
Steel + metals lifts carry an exposure profile defined by molten metal and continuous heat. The exposures below are what the sealed lift plan exists to control. Every Maxor deliverable in this vertical addresses them explicitly.
Molten-metal proximity
A lift near a furnace, ladle, or caster shares the floor with molten metal. A dropped load that breaches a ladle or a launder is a catastrophic event. The contingency matrix maps the molten-metal line-of-fire as keep-clear before the pick.
Production halt cost
A steel mill or aluminum potline runs continuously — an unplanned stop costs $100 K+ per day and risks freezing metal in the line. A lift that overruns its outage slot cascades to the restart. The lift plan keeps the outage on schedule.
Crane catastrophic failure
Furnace + ladle equipment runs the largest mill cranes near their charts. Tip-over or boom collapse on a hot floor is a fatality-class event with a molten-metal tail. Capacity utilization documented per pick.
Hot-and-confined mill floor
Lifts happen beside equipment radiating heat, on a floor dense with launders, busbar, and structure. Clearances + residual-heat + radiant-load keep-clear are mapped against the as-built before the crane sets up.
Heavy-equipment precision
Rolling-mill stands, caster segments, and furnace components set to tight tolerance — a misaligned stand is an off-gauge product run. The set geometry is engineered, not eyeballed beside the line.
Electrical + busbar proximity
Smelter potlines + arc furnaces carry massive electrical current. A steel-chain lift near energized busbar is a conductivity hazard. The lift plan documents the energized keep-clear ; synthetic rigging where conductivity is the risk.
Six lift archetypes. Furnace to coil.
Steel + metals lifts cluster into recurring engineering patterns across the hot end, the mill, and the smelter. Each archetype has its own load-case profile and heat / molten-metal constraint. The methodology adapts ; the rigor doesn't.
Furnace + ladle equipment lifts
Furnace shells + roofs, electrodes, ladles, ladle-car components, tundish equipment. Lifts on the hot end beside molten metal. Line-of-fire keep-clear documented ; tandem-crane for the heaviest shells.
Mill-stand + roll lifts
Rolling-mill stands, work + backup rolls, drive equipment, coilers. Precision set to mill tolerance. Confined mill-bay access, sequenced into the maintenance window.
Continuous-caster equipment
Caster segments, mold equipment, straightener + withdrawal components. Set to caster-line tolerance. Lifts in the confined caster bay, sequenced into the cast campaign.
Potline + anode + rodding equipment
Aluminum-smelter pot equipment, anode + rodding-room components, pot-tending-machine handling. Lifts beside energized potline busbar — synthetic rigging, energized keep-clear documented.
Coil + finished-product handling
Steel + aluminum coil handling, slab + billet lifts, finished-product movement. Surface-preserving rigging on finished metal — no marking. High-throughput repeat-pick efficiency.
Multi-pick outage + reline campaigns
Furnace relines + mill outages are tightly-sequenced lift campaigns. We plan pick order, crane positioning, and shared rigging so the lifts flow without re-mobilizing mid-outage — and the line restarts on schedule.
Steel & Metals in the field
From sector context to the lifts we engineer — a look at where this work happens.
The standards we work to.
The lift is our scope, so the standards we cite are crane + rigging standards. The metallurgy, the furnace design, the process safety belong to the plant's engineers — we engineer getting their equipment into place beside molten metal.
Mobile and locomotive cranes
The mobile crane safety standard — load charts, capacity, setup, operation. Cited on every steel + metals lift plan as the methodology baseline, alongside mill-crane operating limits.
Mobile crane safety + Quebec lift-plan code
The Canadian mobile crane standard ; in Quebec, Norme Z150 is the provincial lift-plan code — Quebec is Canada's aluminum heartland. Cited on every engagement in its jurisdiction.
Slings
Governs sling selection, rating, and inspection — wire-rope, chain, synthetic. Cited on the rigging spec of every lift, each leg sized against the load + safety factor, with heat-derating noted near the hot end.
Rigging hardware
Governs shackles, links, rings, and connecting hardware. Cited on the rigging assembly — every component rated to the load it carries, heat-rated near molten metal.
Crane operator qualification
The qualification + certification standard for mobile crane operators. Referenced in the operator-brief section so the right ticket runs the hot-floor pick.
Manufacturer load charts
The crane's published capacity at radius, boom length, and configuration. Every capacity-utilization figure in our plans traces back to the manufacturer chart.
Four capability lines. One steel & metals engagement.
Maxor's four service pillars all show up on a mill or smelter lift. Here's how each one earns its place — furnace to coil.
Sealed plans + emergency response
Furnace, mill, and smelter lifts, single-crane to multi-crane tandem, molten-metal-proximity-mapped. Same-day emergency tier when a hot-end failure threatens the restart. Capacity utilization per pick ; Z150 / B30.5 cited inline.
Distribution + training + implementation
Furnace-shell, mill-stand, and confined-caster-bay lifts modeled in CRANEbee before the crane sets up. Swing arc + molten-metal line-of-fire keep-clear drawn against actual plant geometry. We distribute, train, and implement the platform on Canadian mill + smelter projects.
Distribution + advisory + training
Dyneema® synthetic chains for lifts near energized potline + arc-furnace busbar where steel-chain conductivity is a hazard, and on finished coil + product where marking is unacceptable. Heat-derating respected near the hot end. Authorized Quebec distribution.
Deterministic engineering platform
The Maxor software line (Heisen, Maxor Audit, Maxor Ground) provides the audit-grade evidence substrate behind the sealed lift plans — recallable lift records, outage-campaign provenance, sovereign deployment.
Beyond the four pillars — software built for your operation.
The four service pillars cover the lift. But most mills + smelters carry a software gap the off-the-shelf vendors never close. We build it — custom applications, integrations, and managed services, same engineering posture, same team from kickoff to go-live, sovereign by default. Engineered in Canada, owned by you.
Heisen — our deterministic intelligence layer — is optional on any build: embed it or not, your call. Either way it plugs into a fresh custom app or your existing third-party software via API.
Outage + reline campaign planning
Sequences furnace-reline + mill-outage lifts against crane availability, crew, and the cast / rolling schedule — so the line restarts on the planned hour, not days late.
Production + metal-balance reconciliation
Reconciles charge, melt, cast, and finished-product across the plant into one auditable metal balance — replacing the spreadsheet chain that breaks every time a scale drifts.
Asset-integrity + reliability dashboard
A registry of mill + smelter critical assets — install date, inspection history, refractory life, replacement lead time — so the next reline scope is built from data, not memory.
Scope your mill or smelter lift.
Tell us the equipment, the outage window, and the hot-floor environment. A senior lead responds within one business day with a scoped lift engagement and a path to first deliverable.