My office is catercorner from a construction site. Just the other day, a construction crane mysteriously appeared in the middle of the site. The fact that it would appear there isn’t particularly mysterious; I’m simply wondering HOW it got there. It looks like it’s made up of modular parts, but how were the top parts put on the bottom parts? It’s like you need another crane to put the parts of this crane together … and then how was the FIRST crane put together, and where did it go when it was done? Oy. Of course, this is all assuming that the crane wasn’t simply brought to the site preassembled but lying on its side and then somehow pulled to an upright position, which strikes me as being really, really difficult.
Some cranes build themselves. The cab and boom start at ground level and they lift pieces of the tower, and then climb the newly-installed section. This is a fascinating thing to watch, especially in time-lapse.
Others are built by using a tractor crane to help build the tower, and then the construction crane climbs that.
I saw this done, once, a long time ago.
The crane came in parts, each on a truck. Three trucks, one with a tracked Crane body, motor, and a short wide arm, and two trucks with more parts of the arm. Each truck backed up to the site, and the second two were aligned and connected before the truck left. (It took only a few minutes of yelling and moving.) Then the arm of the crane was brought upright, just like when it is in use. The entire process took only an hour or so.
The process is the same for larger cranes, I think, although I have never watched one of those. Some types of cranes climb up a tower which they can lift above themselves a piece at a time. That takes longer though.
Tris
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It’s a little choppy, but this article might help.