Since the introduction of foreign tower crane technology to produce tower cranes in the 1980s, China's tower crane manufacturing has made great progress in the past 30 years, but the technical level of tower cranes has not improved much. With the development of science and the progress of the times, tower crane products will continue to improve. The Forecast of Production and Marketing Demand, Transformation and Upgrading Analysis Report of China's Tower Crane Industry from 2018 to 2023 released by the Prospective Industry Research Institute pointed out that the service life of construction machinery such as tower cranes is generally 6-10 years, which is 6-10 years away from the last peak of the construction machinery industry (2007-2011), and the industry has entered a period of centralized release of demand for upgrading. In the next two to three years, the demand space for renewal will continue to expand.

There are three trends in the change of tower crane: first, the trend of flat head of medium tower crane (63t. m~500t. m) and boom of large tower crane (above 600t. m); Second, the technical performance of the three mechanisms of the tower crane will be continuously improved, especially the performance of the lifting mechanism; Third, the application of digital technology in tower crane control system will continue to be popular.

The medium tower crane is flat headed, and the large tower crane is boom oriented. First of all, the manufacturing of flat head tower crane can realize modular production to a greater extent, promote enterprises to improve the modernization of process equipment and production means, improve production efficiency and manufacturing accuracy, and reduce production costs. Secondly, the modular structure of the flat head tower crane can greatly reduce the tonnage of the lifting equipment during installation and removal, and the safety of installation and removal is higher. For tower group operation of super high buildings, the boom upgrading of large tower cranes is irreplaceable for horizontal balance boom tower cranes; The luffing of the boom tower crane makes the installation height of the tower crane relatively low, and at the same time, it can greatly reduce the occupation of the space outside the construction site.

At present, the hoisting mechanism, technical level and performance of tower cranes in China have a big gap with that of foreign countries. The LVF variable frequency hoisting mechanism using German "Flanders" straight cross cylindrical gear reducer and the straight line mechanism of Botan MC320 tower crane are of higher level, but the proportion of the cranes using the backward technology is larger, such as Botan F0 series RCS hoisting mechanism and Liebherr's early π type hoisting mechanism. These two mechanisms are the technologies of the last century 60 years, with large energy consumption and short service life of the reducer. Therefore, it is inevitable that the technical performance of the three mechanisms of the tower crane, especially the lifting mechanism, will continue to improve.

From two aspects of technology and use, the lifting mechanism of medium and large tower cranes (150t. m-500t. m) should adopt orthogonal cylindrical gear reducer, L-type layout, and variable frequency speed regulation, which will become the trend in the future. At present, the reducers of several domestic reducer plants, such as Guomao, Boneng, Jiepai and other manufacturers, can basically meet the needs of the hoisting mechanism configuration of medium-sized tower cranes in technology. If more application can be made, it will objectively promote the improvement of the technical level and quality of these enterprises' products.