Ollie and Eddie’s Swedish Roadtrip (Part Four)

by Nick Drew | Fri 28 Jun 2019

Ollie and Eddie’s Swedish Roadtrip (Part Four)

Looking back at more of the kit which caught the eye’s of specialist owner/operators Ollie Kitchin and Eddie Warrener at this year’s MaskinExpo show in Stockholm, Sweden.

“Wacker Neuson had a great stand, said Ollie, the ET35 was really nice with its angle dozer blade and they were also showing off an electric shovel”.

“JCB had a full stand as usual, with the Hydradig presented and the new X Series 220XLC which was getting a lot of attention”.

“We also spotted this useful feature that they had put on their loading shovels, the hitch, electrics and hydraulics etc, would fold up out of the way when not in use, the usual clever thinking that we’ve come to expect from the Swedes”.

“SMP had a nice stand, including this colour co-ordinated unit to match the machine it was fitted on”.

“Also on display was their take on the “Grab John” pole planting bucket, as well as their automatic hitch with extremely low build height, which is suitable for machines up to 100tons”.

“An example of it working was on the Hidromek 390 machine on the Hidromek dealers stand”.

“Oil Quick presented a very good working demo on their stand that also included quick connection for loading shovels as well. They also had quick change set ups for Hiabs, for changing between brick grabs and muck clamshell grabs”.

“Engcon were displaying their new prototypes of a cassette saw, road brush and hedge cutting attachments which can be used in conjunction with their detachable gripper set up, giving the user lots of different possibilities depending on the work they do”.

“These were something a bit different from them as well, this is memory plastic, light weight, but very durable protection for the ram rods”.

“This was very impressive from the people at SVAB, it is only concept at the moment hence why the original joysticks are in, but they are looking into installing these mini joystick’s”.

Talking about this joystick set-up long term advocate of SVAB systems Eddie Warrener said, “This is the one that blew me away! The new Tooltip Control System, where basically, they’ve ripped everything up and started again with excavator controls to take into account that tiltrotators are the future and will become the norm”.

Eddie continued, “They have basically installed a second set of mini joysticks here in the concept machine”.

“The right hand joystick controls the bucket functions all in one, as though its replicating the movement of your hand, while the left hand joystick controls the main boom and dipper, but incredibly pushing it forward or pulling it backwards will pull in at a level grade automatically, by adjusting the boom and dipper together with no input required. The feel from those mini joysticks was incredible, is there anything in the idea…. I’d say absolutely!” More from Ollie and Eddie in the next instalment.

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