Verstegen orange peel grabs are designed for handling iron scrap. There are various types of iron scrap and not every orange peel grab is suitable for each type of iron scrap. The design of the grab must be adjusted to the types of scrap that will be handled.
Shredded scrap is old steel scrap, fragmentised into pieces not exceeding 200 mm in any direction. Because the material is easy to penetrate, the orange peel grab will pick up a larger volume than the designed scale capacity (most of the time the scales cannot close completely). Because of the high closing forces, the material is highly compressed inside the scales.
Heavy Melting Scrap (HMS) is old thick steel scrap, predominantly more than 6 mm thick in sizes not exceeding 1.5 x 0.5 x 0.5m. It may include tubes and hollow sections.
The bulk density is normally about 0.7 ton/M3.
Because of the large pieces it can be very hard to penetrate the material. The forces acting on the grab can be extremely high and therefore a heavy cactus (orange peel) grab is required. Verstegen recommends the use of open model scales for better penetration.
During the closing and initial lifting of the grab a lot of extra force can be required to pull the grab free from the surrounding scrap. These “dynamic forces” can result in 20-30% higher loads than the theoretical load based on the scrap density alone.
