Parts that Connect
Text:Toshiaki Saito Photographs:Kazashito Nakamura; Norio Sekine Illustrations:Hirotaka Uchiyama
All about Construction Machinery Components
The number of components that make up construction machinery is enormous. The machinery is created by connecting these individual components.
What purpose does each component serve? Let us look at some surprising facts about construction machinery components, as well as some trivia about them.
We learned this from Takanori Doi
Service material Dept.
Customer Support Div.
What components make up a hydraulic excavator?
An extremely important factor for construction machinery is to not stop working on site. If machineries do stop working on site, operations obviously stop as well, severely impacting our customers’ business. In order to prevent such situations, Hitachi Construction Machinery is strengthening its after-service system for maintenance. It is particularly important to diagnose the state of machinery and replace individual parts before they fail.
At the same time, there are two things our customers can do to use their machinery in good condition for a long time: 1) always perform periodic inspections based on the methods and periods for maintenance described in the operating manual; 2) use components recommended by Hitachi Construction Machinery.
Especially after a warranty term has expired, mishaps frequently occur due to the use of general-purpose parts/components that can be inexpensively procured on the market. This may not only impact the entire machinery and cause defects, but also result in expensive repair costs.
At Hitachi Construction Machinery we offer parts/components for various after-services, so that our customers can minimize machinery downtime due to part/component replacement and use their machineries in good condition and for a long time. The performance and cost our customers expect from our parts may depend on a machinery’s period of use. Hitachi Construction Machinery therefore provides different options for parts/components based on the performance and price desired, in order to provide thorough support for machinery from right after purchase to disposal.
Component trivia
Special focus on giant mining machinery parts!
The tires on Hitachi Construction Machinery’s largest rigid dump truck are six times the size of regular passenger car tires!
The tire measurements of the rigid dump truck EH5000AC-3, which operates with an AC (alternating current) power source, are: 3.8 m in diameter, 1.2 m in width and 4.7 tons in weight. Compared to the tires of a standard passenger car (60 cm in diameter, 20 cm in width), the dump truck’s tires have a diameter and width that are six times as big. Just for comparison, the body of a rigid dump truck has a length of 13.8 m and a width of 8.5 m, making it nearly 120 square meters or the size of a small house.
The EX8000, one of the world’s largest class hydraulic excavators, is equipped with two engines and 16 hydraulic pumps.
Even without the arm and bucket, the EX8000’s giant body has a height of 9.9 m, or almost 10 m, and a width of over 10 m. In order to move such a large frame, it is equipped with two engines with a rated output of 1,450 kW each, and 16 hydraulic pumps. The capacity of the bucket attached to the end of its arm is likewise enormous: 40 m3. It’s so big that even just the height of its undercarriage easily surpasses 3 m, which a person couldn’t reach even if they stretched their arms as high as possible.
chapter-2 Using Keywords to Decipher the Future of Hitachi Construction Machinery and Components
