Diggers Demo Expo Experience (Part One)

Tue 02 Jul 2013

Diggers Demo Expo Experience (Part One)

As an operator, I have little, if any, experience of the demolition industry, having spent the last 35 years on civil engineering and house building sites. Nevertheless, I am very interested in the work that the highly skilled demolition men & women do on a daily basis on sites up and down the country. Demolition has come a long way from the “gung ho” days of bashing it all down into a big heap and making a mess. Modern day machines and attachments make the job so much more refined, and it was good to see a large selection of demo spec machines laid out for the industries select and their families to see. The fact that on Saturday, it was a family day added that little bit extra to the event, children are our future as they say, and if we are to encourage more youngsters into the plant and machinery industry we have to capture their interest from an early age.

Visitors were greeted at the top of the ramp into the quarry by the now famous right hand cabbed, Cat 320D hydraulic excavator, that was the star in the ten minute opening scene of the latest James Bond film Skyfall. The machine was specially adapted for the movie due to the shot being filmed for the right hand side of a railway track on location in Turkey. There seems to be a bit of mystery as to who actually owns this machine, and indeed what will happen to it in the future? I, for one, would love to know.

Once down in the quarry floor, conditions were a bit sticky under foot, as the Friday had been plagued by intermittent rain, but in true British style, the show must go on, and I made tracks straight for the HM Plant stand. I mention this first, because sadly we are all too often starved of any participation from Hitachi at the major plant shows. So for me it was a really pleasant surprise to see them attending this fledgling event. On display were a number of machines, most of which were sold and heading to the relevant customers on the Monday. Dominating the stand was a Zaxis 470LCH, which would be heading for Hampshire based Hughes & Salvidge, and a Zaxis 225USR LC, for Wooldridge Demolition.

Just a bit further along we came across our friends from Finning UK, who were displaying the extremely popular Cat 308E mini excavator, rigged out in demo spec, including cab guard, hydraulic ram guards, and a Cat H65D hydraulic breaker. Also on stand was the Cat 320E, with rotating selector grab, and a 930K wheeled loader in High Lift Waste Handler configuration.

Next machine to catch my eye was this stunning looking Hitachi sporting a Kocurek 28 metre high reach boom. This machine was decked out in the livery of the venues owners, Armac Demolition.

At the time of my visit to our friends at ECY Haulmark, they had no machine on the demo plot, as the Armac machine they were using to demonstrate the Oil Quick system had gone down to another plot for a short spell. I was however impressed with the look of this VTN SB20 vibratory screening bucket.

On the Worsley Plant stand there was no fewer than 3 machines from the Doosan stable, demonstrating various items from the company’s product portfolio, including a crushing bucket from MB Crushers, a concrete pulverizer from Rotar, and a rotating selector grab, which was also from Dutch manufacturer Rotar.

I was to a pay a return visit to the Worsley Plant stand for a quick play on the controls, but more of that in part two of this report.

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