Capital Equipment News February 2018

MOTOR GRADERS

CASE motor graders feature a forward-mounted articulation joint and a rear-mounted cab.

Taking control of motor grader productivity

Traditionally, there was no substitute for experience when it came to motor grader operation. The conventional motor grader controls of the past weren’t that simple to learn and often overawed new operators. However, leading grader manufacturers have made significant headway in addressing the critical shortage of qualified operators by offering enhanced features to simplify grader operation, writes Munesu Shoko .

I n the past, it was an “art” to learn tra- ditional motor grader controls, but in recent years original equipment manu- facturers, through their advanced research and development regimes, have made motor grader operation simpler than in the old days. What really made older versions of motor graders difficult to operate? Yaroslav Chechik, Motor Grader Product Specialist at Caterpillar, says the main difficulty when working on a conventional

grader with a set of levers is to learn and remember all the functions of each of them and to multitask. To be more productive, the operator needs to perform several imple- ment movements at the same time. “It is a tough job when you have eight levers with a steering wheel in the middle of them and the task is to steer, lift the moldboard and rotate it at the same time, especially for the new operators. That is why operating the grader was called an art,”

says Chechik. Dale Oldridge, Product Marketing

Manager at Bell Equipment, says previously access to GPS positioning was a costly or non-existent option available in the market, which meant that there was greater onus on the grader operator to have the skill and technique to achieve the desired surface profile in the quickest possible time. “Improvements in hydraulics have allowed the traditional graders to move to fluid blade

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