Hoist Accessories

Electric Hoist Accessories Buying Guide

Three jobs: carry the hoist, control it, and prove it. Everything on this page supports a hoist rather than lifting on its own, and it sorts into three groups. The trolley carries the hoist along an I-beam so the load can travel across the bay instead of going straight up and down in one spot; it is the accessory most buyers come here for and has the most choices. The controls, pendants and radio remotes, put the operator at a safe working distance from the load. The end stops and testers are the safety layer: end stops keep a trolley from rolling off the beam, and the Harrington load testers confirm a hoist still holds its rating after service. Most of these parts hang off the powered units in electric hoists, so pick the hoist and how it mounts first, then match the accessories to it.

Fit the trolley to the beam before you look at anything else. A trolley rides the lower flange of an I-beam, so the first spec is flange width, not capacity. Every trolley here adjusts across a range, and the beam has to fall inside it. The Bison ATP low-headroom trolleys come in a plain push version from about $180 and a geared version from about $230, both rated 0.5 through 5 ton, with fit ranges that run from roughly 2 to 12 inches of flange depending on capacity. Measure the actual flange width of your runway, confirm it sits inside the trolley's range, and only then check that the trolley rating covers the hoist plus its heaviest load. If your hoist hangs from a fixed hook instead of a beam, skip the trolley and see suspension points. Flange width is the most common ordering mistake here, because a trolley that will not clamp your beam is useless no matter how strong it is.

Push, geared, or motorized. Three ways move a trolley along the beam. A push trolley rolls when the operator shoves the load by hand, fine for light loads, short beams, and occasional moves. A geared trolley adds a hand chain and gearing so one person can inch a heavy load precisely without fighting it, the right pick when positioning matters or the load is too heavy to push. A motorized trolley drives itself, and it earns its price on long runways, heavy loads near the trolley's rating, and all-shift duty. Harrington's motorized units cover the powered end: the MR single-speed runs 1/8 through 5 ton from around $5,300, the SMR single-phase model suits shops without three-phase power, and the SMRQ adds dual-speed travel so the trolley creeps for spotting and runs fast between picks. The same push and geared trolleys also carry the hand-chain and lever units in manual hoists and trolleys.

Specialty trolleys: food grade and air powered. Two families solve harder environments. Food-grade trolleys carry nickel-plated or white-epoxy finishes and food-safe details for wet, washdown processing and packaging lines: Harrington's PT-FG push trolley starts around $1,150, and the MR-FG motorized trolley comes single- or dual-speed for the same clean-plant duty. Air-powered trolleys trade the electric motor for compressed air, which suits high duty cycles that would cook an electric unit and, with spark-resistant components, hazardous locations where an electric arc is a problem. The Harrington MCL lube-free air trolley covers 1/4 through 6 ton, and the MCR is built to travel Harrington's TCK air hoists. These are five-figure machines, so buy them for the environment that demands them, food safety, continuous running, or an explosive atmosphere, not as a general upgrade.

Run the hoist from the floor: pendants and radio remotes. A pendant is a wired push-button station that hangs from the hoist; a radio remote cuts the cord so the operator can stand clear of the load and see the whole lift. The Duct-O-Wire weather-resistant pendants come in a two-motion up/down build from about $225 and a four-motion up/down, left/right build from about $310, both in sealed enclosures rated for outdoor and washdown use. The Bison radio remotes step up by how many motions your system has: a hoist-only remote from about $570 runs a fixed hoist, the hoist-and-trolley remote adds beam travel, and the hoist, trolley, and bridge remote drives a full underhung crane that moves in all three axes, the kind of monorail and underhung crane covered by ASME B30.11. Each comes single- or dual-speed. Buy the remote that matches your crane's motions exactly, no more and no fewer.

End stops and the load-test rigs that keep a hoist honest. Two safety items close out the collection. The universal beam trolley end stops bolt to the ends of a runway and physically stop a trolley from rolling off the beam; the ones here fit flange widths from about 3 to nearly 25 inches, and a runway without them is an accident waiting on the first hard stop. The Harrington static and dynamic hoist testers are shop equipment for dealers and service departments that certify hoists: the static tester load-tests manual hoists to 10 ton, and the dynamic tester runs manual and electric hoists under load. That matters because ASME B30.16, the standard covering overhead underhung hoists, ties testing to a hoist's life. A hoist is load-tested before first use and again after any repair to a load-bearing part, with the test load set between 100 and 125 percent of rating by a qualified person.