by Nick Drew | Wed 24 Mar 2021
Flying the Finnish Attachment Flag
The long-established family business was founded in 1970 by Martti Takanen, initially as a sand and gravel delivery company supplying local municipalities. In 1981 the company diversified and expanded into other sectors and the business name changed to Kuljetusliike Martti Takanen Ky.
In 2014, as we often see in family businesses, responsibility for the day to day running of the business for passed on to the next generation of siblings, Juha and Johanna Takanen, and the company name was changed for the last time to be known as Takanen MR Oy, which it remains to this day.
Since 2004 the company the company has adopted the Finnish built Marttiini Metal Oy tilting couplers and in more later years these systems have also received the independent rotation systems that Marttiini build, which with the use of an OilQuick set up, can also be removed when the weight of the rotator is not required for example, during hard digging or when loading trucks. Today Takanen run five machines with detachable bucket rotators.
Takanen MR Oy believes that removing the bucket rotator when not needed results in a lot less wear and tear on the machine, Takanen said, “The MR26 rotator unit for example weighs just over half a tonne, that’s a lot of extra metal to be moving around, which equates to more fuel being burnt, so by removing it when not needed, it saves the device from unnecessary wear and fuel savings”.
This Volvo EC250EL from the Takanen fleet was operating on an electrical substation project in Haapajärvi and is equipped with Marttiini’s MT26 bucket tilt and the aforementioned detachable MR26 rotator on S70 pins. Hydraulic connections are made using the OilQuick OQ70 series quick connector system. Engcon proportional controls are deployed in the cab.
At the controls of the machine is Tuomas Hyry from Ylivieskala who has been operating excavators for around 10 years. Tuomas had high praise for the set up on his machine, commenting, “The Volvo excavator and Marttiini attachment combination brings precision to my work and speeds up operations. The Marttiini units are solidly built and sturdy, so there’s nothing to worry about”.
Toumas continued, “I have done all sorts of things on the jobs with Marttiini’s tilting bucket rotator, often to the extremes of durability, during the coldest of weathers and hard digging, but I’m delighted to report that there have been no failures of the equipment!”.
On the day of the site visit the temperature was -20 degrees, hard going for men and the machinery!
Summarizing, Takanen’s Construction Manager, Teemu Takanen, said, “We at Takanen MR Oy have been cooperating with Marttiini Metal Oy for a long time now, especially regarding attachments for our excavators, we only have to inform Miika Marttiin of our requirements and he comes up with the design we need”.
Checkout the video courtesy of our friends at Koneporssi Magazine.
Special thanks go to my good friend Esa Suominen for the photos and original text.