Skylaunch designs and manufactures one-off winches for special applications. We offer configurations driven by mains or battery packs / UPS electricity, petrol, propane or diesel engines. Up to 750hp is available with single engine machines and the sky’s the limit with multiple engines!
We can manufacture for civil or military projects to specifications required by the customer. We have developed systems for crash testing cars, HGVS, PSVS, trailers and carriages as well as UAV launching systems, military targeting systems with variable speed control and Aerostat, Helikite and balloon winching applications with single or multiple cables / risers.
We have a very experienced design and development team which means we can work efficiently with both one-off and high volume projects.
For industries including:
For wide-ranging applications such as:
The Parachute Training Balloon winch has been developed by Skylaunch for military use all over the world. Its design features many attributes that reduce overall costs of ownership and simplify both operation and maintanance.
The winch is mounted on a standard ISO, 20ft flat-rack mounting system for quick and easy deployment and features a single, direct hydraulic drive, large diameter drum.
Skylaunch designs and manufactures various winches for Aerostat control and handling for defence, scientific applications, photography, publicity, radio equipment, lifting and many more.
A large variant of cable/optic fibre capacity, tensions, speeds etc are available to suit the customer’s exact requirements.
The winch pictured below was designed for testing military equipment and systems. It has a 675hp engine and a cable system that allows the 7 tonne breaking strain synthetic rope to spool off one drum to a reverse pulley 1km away and back to the powered drum. The drive system can be reversed to move the cable from one drum to the other.
The basic winch design lends itself to many other applications such as crash testing and industrial use. We have numerous “building blocks” which allow us to build special purpose winches in many different configurations and we can gear the cable speed and size to meet virtually any requirements.
Skylaunch design and manufacture bespoke winches for the control and handling of Helikites. They are used for a huge, diverse range of applications from defence & scientific applications to aerial photography, publicity, radio transmission and simple lifting applications.
Skylaunch was commisioned to design and build this winch for a specialist company in Australia. It is a relatively simple, low powered winch for raising and lowering helium filled balloons. The drum is split into six segments to allow six separate cables that are attached to different parts of the balloon to be wound in at the same time. The winch system was used to raise and lower the aerostat and a pod was slung below.
The UAV launcher was designed for NATO forces to aid launching UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles). UAVs generally have low powered engines and therefore need long runways or rocket assistance to get off the ground.
By assisting the launch with a winch the runway can be shortened considerably enabling operations from short runways and more inhospitable locations than normal. Running costs of the Skylaunch winching system are also considerably less than using rocket assistance.
This is only a very short list of example special winches we have designed and manufactured for a huge range of purposes.
If it’s a winch, we can build it. Contact us for a conversation about a special purpose winch.
