# Overhead Crane, Maintenance Workshop and Visitor Corridor Three additions to the building program, decided in October 2026: 1. **An overhead crane over the whole factory floor**, so machines can be moved in, out and around without hiring a mobile crane or dragging them on skates. 2. **A maintenance workshop** with a crane-served service bay, so a machine can be lifted out of the line and serviced properly instead of in place. 3. **A glazed visitor corridor at ground level through the factory**, so guided tours see the whole process without being exposed to noise, dust or plating chemistry, and without production having to stop or escort people across the floor. They are planned together because they collide with each other and with the building: the crane decides where walls may go, the workshop sits where the crane parks, and the corridor runs under the crane runway. This page states what each one needs, what it changes in the [construction RFQ](finance/phase1-construction-rfq.md), the [zone table](scale.md) and [facility security](facility-security.md), and what is still open. Every figure without a vendor or contractor behind it is an estimate. ## 1. Overhead crane ### What it has to lift | Item | Weight | Source | |---|---|---| | Newbilt press (HRP 12) | 1,350 kg | [Newbilt Duplex site requirements](equipment/newbilt/) | | Newbilt extruder | 660 kg | same | | Newbilt hydraulic aggregate (250 L tank, 50 L accumulator) | 600 kg | same, plus the [budgetary offer](equipment/newbilt/) | | Newbilt Classic automatic press | **unknown**, ask Newbilt with the re-quote | not in any document yet (it replaced the Pheenix AD12 in the fleet plan, October 2026) | | Sibert VSP punch / VSF finisher / VSC coiner | 200 / 250 / 1,000 kg; VSP and VSF on castors, the VSC sheet lists none, so it is a lift | [Sibert specifications](equipment/sibert/) (2022 and 2023) | | Pheenix plating units (PPPU, PDPU), silvering unit, prep bench | unknown: dimensions published, weights not; each plating unit carries a 385 L tank, lifted empty | [Pheenix flyers](equipment/pheenix-alpha/), [galvanics and stamper prep](equipment/galvanics.md); ask with the quote | | Water-treatment evaporator | unknown, lifted empty | to be asked with the quote | **Planning capacity: 5 t safe working load** (estimate). It covers the heaviest known lift with its lifting beam and slings at a wide margin and leaves room for the automatic press until Newbilt states the Classic's weight. If the Classic turns out under about 2.5 t, price a **3.2 t** crane as the alternative: lighter runway and frame, and possibly a lighter inspection regime. Thai cranes fall under the Ministry of Labour's 2021 Ministerial Regulation on machinery, cranes and boilers (the same regulation that covers the boiler); a crane-industry summary puts cranes above 3 t on an engineer inspection every three months. Confirm the intervals against the regulation text before choosing the capacity. The crane does **not** serve the outdoor plant. Boiler, chiller, cooling tower, transformer and the BESS enclosure sit outside the main building and are set by mobile crane as normal. ### What kind of crane - **Single-girder electric overhead travelling (EOT) crane** spanning the building's full 25 m width (about 24 m between rail centres), with an electric wire-rope hoist. This is the default factory crane in the Thai market, where most bridge cranes are imported from China and installed by local firms. - **Inverter drives on hoist and travel** with a slow creep speed, because the job is setting precision machines on levelling pads, not moving steel. Radio remote control, so the operator walks beside the load. - Overload limiter, hoist limit switches, warning horn and light, and **protected zones** (a standard option on modern crane controls) so the hook cannot carry a load over the visitor corridor or over enclosed rooms. - **Light duty class.** Machine moves are a few a year plus occasional maintenance lifts, so a light class (around ISO 4301 M3 to M4, estimate) is enough. - **Clean running.** The crane travels over a press hall where dust in a groove is an audible defect: enclosed gearboxes, lubrication-free wheels and an enclosed conductor rail, and the crane **parks over the workshop**, not over the presses. ### What "the whole factory" means in practice The runway runs the full length of the **production compartment**, wall to wall and end to end: press hall, material area, stamper prep, finishing, the workshop and the machine bay. It stops at the fire wall that separates production from the finished-goods warehouse ([RFQ §1a](finance/phase1-construction-rfq.md) requires that wall to be rated EI 60 or EI 120, and a crane cannot run through a fire wall). The warehouse is forklift territory with no heavy lifts, so nothing is lost. With a 300 to 500 m² warehouse at the dock end, the runway is roughly 40 to 48 m of the 60 m building (estimate, set by the warehouse depth). If the fire strategy ends up without that wall, the runway can run the full 60 m. ### What it changes in the building This is where the cost is, and it has to go into the shell price before the contractor quotes. The RFQ currently says **"no crane"**. 1. **Frame designed for crane loads.** Crane brackets or stepped columns, runway beams and rails along both long walls, end stops, and a frame sized for the wheel loads and braking forces. In a PEB this is a known option, but it is a different frame from the one priced so far. 2. **Hook height under the 7.0 m low eave.** The roof falls across the 25 m width, so the low side governs. With a single-girder hoist the rail would sit somewhere around 5.5 to 6 m and the hook around 5 m (estimate; it depends on the haunch depth at the low eave). That is enough to lift a press and carry it low along a clear aisle, which is the right way to move a machine anyway, but not to carry it over other machines or rooms. Ask the contractor for the achievable hook height at 7.0 m and price **+1.0 m on the low eave as an option**. The option costs wall cladding and about 10% more conditioned volume, so take it only if the quoted hook height falls short. 3. **No full-height cross walls inside the crane zone.** A wall across the building would stop the bridge. Partitions inside the zone stop below the bridge, and where a load has to pass (press hall to workshop), the partition has a **full-height opening closed by a high-speed door**, because the hoist rope comes down from above and needs a slot all the way up. Separation between zones is then by air pressure, not by a sealed wall (see the workshop below). 4. **Rooms inside the crane zone are boxes with lids.** Galvanics, stamper prep and any other enclosed room in the zone are built room-in-room with their own ceilings below the bridge. Where heavy kit has to go in (electroforming cells, the water-treatment evaporator), the ceiling gets a **removable crane hatch**. The bridge passes over the lids; loads do not (protected zones). 5. **The roof space belongs to the crane first.** HVAC ducts, sprinkler mains, cable trays and lighting run above the crane envelope or along the walls, never through the band the bridge travels in. Sprinkler coverage under the bridge is an item for the fire designer. 6. **Vibration and the cutting room.** The crane runs on the building frame. Keep the mastering and cutting room outside the crane zone (it belongs at the quiet front of the building with the offices and archive anyway), on a slab isolated from the frame columns, and do not run the crane during a cutting session. ### Machine door: how machines get in and out The vehicle ramp in the RFQ (10.5 m at 1:10, 4.5 m wide) already sits at the far end of the building, opposite the loading docks. That end gets the **machine door** and the **machine bay**: - An insulated sectional door of about **4.5 m wide × 5.0 m high** (estimate) with full seals. It opens only for machine moves, a few times a year, so it does not undermine the airtight envelope the HVAC and the burning-season PM design depend on; schedule moves outside February to April where possible. - The crane runway runs right up to the inside face of the door. - **Method:** a rigid truck reverses up the ramp and through the door into the machine bay, and the crane lifts the machine off the bed inside the building. Three checks for the contractor: the ramp transitions against the truck's ground clearance, door headroom for the truck, and the machine-bay slab rated for **truck wheel loads**, which are point loads and not covered by the 30 kN/m² distributed rating. - **Fallback:** a truck-mounted crane sets the machine on skates at the door threshold and the overhead crane takes it from there. ### Rough cost (estimate) | Item | THB | USD | |---|---|---| | 5 t × ~24 m single-girder EOT crane, supplied and installed | 1.0M – 2.5M | 30k – 76k | | Runway beams, rails, end stops, conductor rail, ~2 × 45 m | 0.8M – 1.6M | 24k – 48k | | Frame premium for crane loads (brackets, heavier columns) | 1.0M – 2.5M | 30k – 76k | | Machine door and truck-rated slab in the machine bay | 0.4M – 0.9M | 12k – 27k | | **Crane total** | **~3.2M – 7.5M** | **~97k – 227k** | ## 2. Maintenance workshop and machine bay ### Where At the ramp end, inside the crane zone, between the machine door and the press hall. One space does two jobs: - **Machine bay**: new machines land here, are unpacked, inspected and documented before they go to the floor; machines leaving for vendor repair are crated here. - **Workshop**: a machine is disconnected, lifted out of the line with the crane, set down on the service bay and worked on properly, with tools, light and space around it. The crane's parking position is above it, which keeps the idle crane off the press hall. ### What is in it | Area | Contents | Size (estimate) | |---|---|---| | Service bay | Clear crane-served floor for one press-sized machine with about 1.5 m working space all round (a Newbilt press stands on under 1 m², an AD12 on about 3.25 m²); bunded drip-tray floor; 400 V three-phase and 230 V outlets; compressed air drop; task lighting | ~60 m² | | Bench area | Workbenches and vices, pillar drill, hydraulic hose crimper (the press hydraulics run at 180 to 200 bar and hoses are a routine spare), closed-loop parts washer, mould and platen bench, optionally a small lathe and mill for brackets and one-off parts | ~40 m² | | Spares store | Lockable, shelved; every part tracked in the factory application (stock, minimum level, which machine it fits) | ~20 – 30 m² | | Hot-work corner | Welding screen and fume extractor; hot-work permit, because paper, cartons and hydraulic oil share the building | ~10 m² | | **Total** | | **~100 – 150 m²** | **Spares are the uptime lever.** Newbilt service comes from Germany and Pheenix from Sweden; the northern-dispatch service question in the [supplier map](suppliers/equipment-suppliers.md) only partly closes that gap. A press down for a seal or a heater should be back the same day from the shelf, not after a courier. ### Keeping the workshop's dirt out of the press hall Grinding dust, welding fume and oil mist must not reach the presses. Since the crane zone rules out a sealed full-height wall (section 1), the workshop is held at **negative pressure** to the press hall: local extraction at the welding and grinding positions, an exhaust that keeps air flowing from the hall into the workshop over the top of the partition and through the high-speed door, never the other way. The HVAC zoning in [facility security](facility-security.md) gains the workshop as a zone below the press hall in the pressure cascade. ### Oil, waste and water - Hydraulic oil drums on spill pallets, spill kits at the service bay, used oil and oily rags collected by a licensed waste contractor under DIW manifests. - **No floor drain.** A dry workshop keeps the zero contaminated water commitment in [sustainability](sustainability.md) simple: spills are absorbed and collected, never washed down. ### Safety - **Isolation before lifting.** Before a machine is disconnected: electrical lockout, steam isolated and vented, and the hydraulics depressurised, including the aggregate's 50 L gas-loaded accumulator, which holds pressure after the pump stops. Written lockout/tagout per machine. - **A lift plan for every machine move**, a trained crane operator and a trained slinger, and nobody under the load. - **Warranty.** Newbilt's offer requires every installation to be commissioned by an engineer trained on Newbilt machinery, the first one by Newbilt itself, and ties warranty claims to that. Ask Newbilt in writing whether lifting a press into the workshop and back counts as a re-installation during the warranty period. ### Rough cost (estimate) Workshop fit-out (benches, hand and power tools, hose crimper, parts washer, welding set and fume extractor, shelving, spill equipment, small machine tools if wanted): **1.0M to 2.5M THB (~30k to 76k USD)**. The first spares stock sits in the existing working-capital line in [total investment](finance/total-investment.md). ## 3. Visitor corridor ### What it is for Guided tours for artists, labels, investors, schools and the public that show the whole chain from lacquer to packed record, while visitors: - hear nothing louder than conversation, so no hearing protection; - breathe the corridor's own filtered air, never press hall or galvanics air; - need **no PPE** at all, which turns a tour from an escorted, kitted-out floor walk into something that can run several times a day; - cannot touch anything, distract an operator or bring dust onto the floor. The glass protects production as much as it protects visitors. ### Route At ground level along **one long wall, the car-park elevation**, which is where the RFQ already places the main entrance and a second exit at the far end of the same wall ([RFQ §1b](finance/phase1-construction-rfq.md)). The tour starts at reception and leaves by the far exit, or loops back. Along a wall rather than down the middle, for three reasons: - it does not cut the production floor in two, so forklift routes and crane moves never cross it; - the strip under the crane runway is where the hook reaches least well anyway, so the corridor uses the least valuable floor; - both ends already have exits. **Stations follow the process order**, which means the process layout has to run along the corridor: 1. Mastering and cutting (window into the cutting room) 2. Galvanics (fixed, sealed window in the clean room wall; no opening, no shared air) 3. Stamper prep 4. Material lab and PVC handling 5. **Press hall**, the long glazed stretch and the centre of the tour 6. Trimming and 100% optical inspection 7. QC and listening, with a headphone listening point 8. Finishing and packaging, where the records leave production Finished goods sit behind the fire wall and are shown from a fire-rated window or not at all. The concept drawing [facility-layout.drawio](facility-layout.drawio) predates this corridor and the detached utility yard and does not yet follow this order; it needs redrawing at the next layout pass. A first rough pass that does follow it is the BIM sketch [production-hall-layout-sketch.FCStd](production-hall-layout-sketch.FCStd) (top view: [PNG](production-hall-layout-sketch.png), October 2026): ramp end with machine door, workshop and spares; then mastering, galvanics, stamper prep, PVC lab and material area, the press hall, inspection, QC and packaging along the corridor; the fire wall at 48 m and the warehouse and dispatch at the dock end, with a 4.5 m crane and forklift aisle along the back wall from the machine door to the fire wall. It shows one conflict to resolve: with the workshop at the ramp end, reception and the cutting room sit under the bridge's travel too, against point 6 above (cutting room outside the crane zone). ### How it is built - **Room-in-room**: a glazed wall on the production side, a solid roof at about 3.0 m (an acoustic lid and protection from anything dropped), floor on the slab. - **Clear width about 2.4 m** (estimate): a group of about 15 with a guide, and room for a wheelchair to pass. - **Length about 45 to 55 m**, so roughly **110 to 130 m²** of floor and **~150 m²** of glazing (estimate). - **Acoustics.** Press halls typically run 80 to 90 dB(A) near the presses (to be measured on this plant). Laminated acoustic double glazing in the Rw 40 to 45 dB class (estimate) brings that down to roughly 40 to 50 dB(A), so a guide can talk without a headset system. Seals, penetrations and door gaskets decide whether that is achieved, more than the glass does. - **Air.** Its own HVAC zone with filtered supply at slight positive pressure to the press hall, so any leak runs from the corridor into the hall. It is the cleanest-air space a visitor enters, which matters in burning season. - **Glass safety.** Toughened laminated glass; a kerb or steel barrier on the production side wherever forklifts run; the crane's protected zone over the whole corridor. - **Fire and escape.** The corridor is an escape route with exits at both ends. Where it runs along a fire compartment wall or the galvanics room, that stretch of glazing must be fire-rated (EI), which costs several times standard glazing, so keep those stretches short. - **Viewing.** Light the production side brighter than the corridor and use low-reflection glass, or the visitors mostly see themselves. ### Step-free access is now required The building floor sits at **+1.2 m** and the RFQ's only ramp is the 1:10 vehicle ramp, which it notes is not an accessible gradient and asked to be told now if a step-free entrance is wanted. Public tours make it a requirement: a **1:12 ramp at the main entrance**, about 14.4 m of run for the 1.2 m rise plus intermediate landings, with handrails both sides. ### Running tours - **Visitor screens** at the stations showing live, non-confidential plant data: a read-only visitor view of the factory application in the style of the [plant operation page](plant-operation.html), on kiosk displays wired like the station kiosks. The visitors' own phones stay on the guest Wi-Fi, which reaches the internet only (VLAN plan in [digital factory](digital-factory.md)). - **Confidentiality.** Unreleased artwork and labels are visible on the floor, and some clients will not want that. Options: schedule tours around confidential runs, a no-photography rule, or switchable privacy glass at the label and packaging stations (extra cost, estimate on request). - **CCTV notice** at the corridor entrance; footage of visitors falls under PDPA like staff footage. - **The tour ends where people can buy records.** A small shop or pick-up counter at the exit fits the [artist platform](artist-platform.md) idea of fans collecting their copy at the plant. - **Access control.** The corridor is its own zone. No door leads from it onto the production floor except, if the fire strategy needs one, an access-controlled staff door. ### Rough cost (estimate) | Item | THB | USD | |---|---|---| | Acoustic laminated glazing, ~150 m² at 6,000 – 15,000 THB/m² | 0.9M – 2.3M | 27k – 70k | | Structure, roof, finishes, HVAC zone, lighting, screens | 1.0M – 2.0M | 30k – 61k | | 1:12 accessible entrance ramp with landings and handrails | 0.3M – 0.6M | 9k – 18k | | **Corridor total** | **~2.2M – 4.9M** | **~67k – 148k** | ## What the three add up to | | Area | THB | USD | |---|---|---|---| | Overhead crane and machine door | (in the shell) | 3.2M – 7.5M | 97k – 227k | | Workshop and machine bay | 100 – 150 m² | 1.0M – 2.5M | 30k – 76k | | Visitor corridor and accessible entrance | 110 – 130 m² | 2.2M – 4.9M | 67k – 148k | | **Total** | **~210 – 280 m²** | **~6.4M – 14.9M** | **~195k – 450k** | All estimates, not yet in the roll-up in [total investment](finance/total-investment.md); that page lists them as added scope until the next re-base. **On area**: the 1,500 m² phase 1 footprint was already tight for the zone table in [scale](scale.md). Moving the boiler and chiller into the detached utility yard freed about 126 m² there, and scale.md left open whether to shrink the building or grow the program into it. These additions answer that: the program grows into it. At the lower half of the zone table everything still fits; at the upper half it does not, and the release valve is the one scale.md already names, moving finished goods into the phase 2 building. ## Changes made elsewhere - [Construction RFQ](finance/phase1-construction-rfq.md): frame type changed from "no crane" to crane-ready, a new section for the crane and the machine door, the accessible entrance ramp made a requirement. - [Scale](scale.md): workshop and corridor added to the zone table. - [Facility security](facility-security.md): visitor management and access zones updated for corridor tours. - [Worker safety](worker-safety.md): lifting operations and the workshop. - [Roadmap](roadmap.md): item 15 (building fit-out). ## Open decisions 1. **Crane capacity**: 5 t or 3.2 t, once Newbilt states the Classic's weight and the inspection intervals are confirmed. 2. **Low eave**: keep 7.0 m or raise to 8.0 m, once the contractor states the achievable hook height. 3. **Runway length**: stop at the warehouse fire wall (recommended) or run the full 60 m if the fire strategy drops the wall. 4. **Process layout along the corridor**: the stations above need the layout redrawn in process order along the car-park elevation. 5. **Fire-rated glazing extent**, from the fire strategy. 6. **Tour policy**: who tours, how often, and the confidentiality rule for client work on the floor.