These are the three most misused and confused terms in the crane indicator business. A crane load indicator is a cab mounted display connected to various types of load sensors that show the crane operator the weight they are lifting. The load indicator can have other options to monitor more additional information such and anti-two-block, boom angle, length, and radius, but it does not monitor the crane's capacity. So it does not have the crane's load chart programmed into memory and does not calculate the safe working load or warn of an overload unless the operator has manually set a load limit.
A load moment indicator or LMI and a rated capacity indicator or RCI, show the operator the load, capacity, boom angle, length, radius, and usually anti-two-block. The LMI and RCI achieve the same load reading but go about it by different methods. So the main difference between a load indicator and an LMI or RCI is that only the LMI and RCI monitor the cranes capacity and warn of overload.