PRODUCT FOCUS
HPE Africa
Hyundai’ s 22t hybrid excavator— the 220LC-9— revealed in 2012, was designed and developed in-house with electric components from the company’ s electronics division.
At CONEXPO-CON / AGG 2017, Project AME( Additive Manufactured Excavator), the world’ s first fully functional 3-D printed excavator and the first large-scale use of steel in 3-D printing, was unveiled. While this is more a display of the advance in 3-D printing than of excavator technology, the fact remains that technology is advancing rapidly. And being able to 3-D print machines has a lot of implications for the machine design and construction in the future. But this is not the only area of technology that is receiving significant attention from OEMs.
PricewaterhouseCoopers’( PwC) global study Industry 4.0: Building the digital enterprise, which incorporates feedback from more than 2 000 companies in 26 countries, including 61 in South Africa, indicates that the digitisation is increasing, and the average level is expected to more than double over the next five years, from 33 % to 72 %. This is mirrored in South Africa, where the level of digitisation and integration is expected to rise from 27 % to 64 % during the same period.
As OEMs and customers alike look at ways to increase uptime, reduce operating costs, and reduce fuel consumption, there are a few areas that are receiving a lot of attention, among them operator interface, condition monitoring, and maintenance scheduling. While it may be tempting to focus on the big, headline-grabbing technological advances— automation, virtual reality, 3-D printing, and so on— a lot of progress is being made in more‘ behindthe-scenes’ areas, particularly operation and fuel consumption. And while automation might still be a few years away, in the interim, OEMs are focusing on making their equipment as simple— and comfortable— to operate as possible.
Sustainability and hybrid equipment In the era of climate change, and particularly at a time when the Western Cape is experiencing the kind of drought expected once in 300 years( Wolski, 2018), sustainability is more important than ever.
According to the World Economic Forum,“ The global environment and economic security are indelibly intertwined, with increasing greenhouse gases, environmental degradation and natural-resource depletion putting sustainable growth and existing business models at risk”.
A focus area at the 48th World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, which took place on 23 – 26 January 2018 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, was sustainable development and the environment. Global consensus is that we need to reduce CO 2 emissions drastically, and in line with this, equipment OEMs are among those groups looking at minimising our reliance on fossil fuels through varying levels of equipment electrification.
As with other classes of construction and mining equipment, electrification of excavators is definitely on the table. Currently, every manufacturer of construction machinery handles hybrid excavators, including Caterpillar, Komatsu, Hitachi, Kobelco, and Volvo Construction Equipment
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