That expensive anti-sway controller was a total dud for me

I dropped $2,800 on a fancy anti-sway system for my Grove RT last spring because everyone online swore by it. After six months of using it on residential builds, I found it actually made my pick-and-place slower by about 15 percent. The thing kept overcorrecting on windy days and I ended up switching it off half the time. I could've just trained my hand better for a fraction of that cost. Has anyone else had buyers remorse on a gadget that was supposed to be a game changer?

3 comments

3 Comments

umabailey22d ago

Ditch the auto mode and run it manual on gusty days. That sensor setup just can't read shifting wind loads the way your hands do.

baker.ben22d ago

About three years ago I had a 40 foot boom crane collapse on a site because the operator insisted he "felt" the gusts better than the computer. The thing is, your hands don't catch the load shift that happens at the lattice joint when a crosswind hits from three different directions at once. Auto mode is sampling wind speed, direction, and load angle every fraction of a second and adjusting without that half-second delay your brain needs to process. You can't feel a 15 MPH gust that changes to 20 MPH in half a second, but the sensor setup can. Plus, manual mode relies on the operator being honest about their own limits, and we all know how that goes when the schedule is tight.

iris_rivera4416d ago

Man, I feel this one deep in my wallet! I bought a fancy auto-leveling attachment for my pickup truck camper, thing cost like two grand. Turned out it was slower than me just tossing down some blocks of wood and eyeballing it. Ended up leaving it in the garage collecting dust for a year before I sold it for half what I paid. But hey, at least I didn't crash a crane like that other guy mentioned, just wasted money on a gadget my clumsy hands could outdo. Sometimes the old-school human touch beats the computer, even if it means admitting my gut is smarter than the engineers.