All are new Stage IIIB compliant machines. The Dash 3 version of the DX300LC crawler excavator has an extra 2% more power at a lower speed of 1800rpm than the existing DX300LC Stage IIIA model.

For those who are not familiar with the show, Plantworx is a new trade show for the UK construction industry. The plan is to hold it every two years and the first event takes place in just a few days!.... 14-16 May 2013, at Stoneleigh Park.  You can register for FREE tickets HERE..

The organisers have set out 100,000m for working machines and live demonstrations, aiming to fill the hole left behind when SED folded. As always with these things, the devil will be in the detail. It must have seemed like a good idea moving SED away from the muddy fields of Fen Farm in Milton Keynes to the hard ground of Rockingham racetrack in Corby, but the lack of digging and the appalling traffic management contributed as much to the ultimate demise of SED at Rockingham as the economic crash. PlantWorx is organised by the Construction Equipment Association, which represents manufacturers. Exhibitors at PlantWorx, however, include hire companies, service providers, training organisations and trade associations, as well as equipment manufacturers. More than 250 exhibitors have booked stand space, so there is no lack of stuff to see.

Gerhard Frainer has his own ideas of what the highlights were, however. Frainer is managing director of the Nenzing factory in Austria that makes duty-cycle cranes and foundation machinery, so is naturally likely to be biased towards his own products.

When asked about his new products at the fair, he was most keen to highlight two: one a crane, the other a drilling rig.

The HS 8300 HD Hybrid Drive is equipped with the Pactronic hydraulics system first seen on Liebherr Nenzing’s harbour cranes. A hydraulic accumulator supplements the fluid pump in delivering power to the system. It serves as a pressure storage reservoir incorporating a gas with a hydraulic fluid. The accumulator is charged every time the load is lowered. Energy is stored in the compressed gas for release on demand. You can see the cylinder in the picture below, just above the left crawler track and below the handrails.

This large Hitachi EX8000-6 in backhoe configuration, is the first of two models that are being delivered to Rio Tinto’s Nammuldi iron ore mine, which is situated 60 kilometres north-west of Tom Price in western Australia. Nammuldi is an open pit operation, with on site processing facilities and has the capacity to turn out around 6.6 million tons per annum.

The mine currently runs three Hitachi mining machines, which consist of, 1 x Hitachi EX1900 and 2 x Hitachi EX2500 machines, but the delivery of the EX8000 -6’s now means they will be running the largest excavators that Hitachi manufacturers. The EX8000-6 has an operating weight of 811000 kg’s and is powered by two Cummins QSKTA60-CE 1,450kw (1,940hp) engines. Another impressive statistic is that the machine requires a 14,900 litre fuel tank to feed its two powerful engines!  

These new machines will primarily be put to work loading haul trucks on site, which consist of 4 x Komatsu 785-7’s and 18 x Komatsu 730E models.

Sadly I couldn’t make it but I was happy to receive these photos to share with you here on The Digger Blog. It looks like the auction site, which only opened a year ago, is starting to really mature as a business.

By all accounts, the equipment on offer there is getting broader. There were 560 bidders registered from 55 countries and more than 660 items of plant were sold.