The Classic Machinery Network

Here's something that you'll all find interesting I'm sure, never ever seen one of these before but it's a Hymac 480 Crawler Loader, must have been a prototype? Im sure its on the proving ground up at the Hymac factory in Rhymney. But it was taken from a 4 page brochure so it must have been available. enjoy

Wonder if it slewed, bucket looks a bit antiquated. Why bother, there were 4 in 1 bucket about then I would imagine.

I would guess that it would push into the heap/face reverse a little then swing to dump/load. May have had a higher load over than some track shovels perhaps?

Excellent I'd guess that it was a prototype for the face shovel attachment that was modified and then later it was offered on the 580; and don't forget that this machine was only limited slew, although it was referred to as a 270 degree slew you could just about do one full circle with one.

Jeremy

You can see why this design was a failure; if you consider how fast a Caterpillar Traxcavator can move compared to this slow beast then the idea was doomed from day one, however once Hymac put the pivot in and used a boom and dipper configuration similar to cable face shovels plus a full 360 degree slew machine it became a winner.
The machine itself would have had this arrangement removed and a standard boom and dipper fitted before being sold; Hymac had this idea that you sold a machine and the front end equipment separately, they tried to push the idea that an excavator could be quickly converted to a crane etc. but not surprisingly this did not happen very often as people tended to buy an excavator for that purpose and a crane for lifting purposes, by the time you had 'fannied around' changing front end equipment's you'd have been better hiring a crane etc.

Jeremy

I didn't think of that Jeremy, it would only have to drive into the pile, it could have slewed on its pin to empty into tippers! If the hydraulic power was enough?

Whitlock 505 wrote:I didn't think of that Jeremy, it would only have to drive into the pile, it could have slewed on its pin to empty into tippers! If the hydraulic power was enough?

would have cut up the ground less slowing on the tracks

Whitlock 505 wrote:

Whitlock 505 wrote:I didn't think of that Jeremy, it would only have to drive into the pile, it could have slewed on its pin to empty into tippers! If the hydraulic power was enough?

would have cut up the ground less slowing on the tracks

Without the pivot it would have still needed to be driven into the spoil pile to load the shovel and the tracking speed of machines such as this is very slow so although you could slew to load a tipper it would still be slower than a standard tracked shovels loading cycle.

Jeremy

HI,
This is new to me too. I'm not a bit surprised it didn't catch on.
A friend of mine Phill Mathews was a development engineer with Hymac at Rhymney. I'll see what he knows about this one when I can get hold of him.
Fred