Capital Equipment News June 2018

CONSTRUCTION NEWS

CASE celebrates 60 years of wheel loader manufacturing

CASE Construction Equipment recently celebrated the 60 th anniversary of its wheel loaders with a dedicated display at Intermat 2018. CASE’s wheel loader production started with the W9, the first CASE integrated four-wheel drive wheel loader introduced in 1958. The W10 and W12 four-wheel drive models and the front-drive W5 loader soon followed. The W series grew through the 1960s and 1970s, including the 15-t W26, introduced in 1968. It was CASE’s first articulated loader and the largest wheel loader offered at the time. The W series loaders all featured cabs mounted on the front half of the machine. With the introduction of Model 621 in 1987, the entire CASE loader line graduated into the 21 Series, a more rugged design that featured modern rear- mounted cabs. The 21 Series models were developed under a new streamlined, cross- functional, concurrent process that became the guide for the rest of the company as it moved into the 21st century. Major innovations in productivity, serviceability and operator comfort continued, and the product line represented

CASE marked the 60 th anniversary of its wheel loaders with a dedicated display at Intermat 2018.

the first heavy earthmoving equipment to deploy a Tier 4 Interim solution without a particulate filter, using selective catalytic reduction (SCR) emissions technology, with the F Series. Several new models were added to the 21 Series, including a new line of compact wheel loaders. “The W9 marked the beginning of a long history of innovation pioneered through many generations of wheel loaders, culminating in today’s

G-Series wheel loader range, introduced a revolutionary windscreen design and raised the bar on operator comfort. These machines have come a long way since the original models, and reflect the practical innovation CASE builds into its equipment to maximise performance and dependability,” says Jose Cuadrado, vice- president, CNH Industrial Construction Equipment for Europe Africa and Middle East. ❂

FUCHS Lubricants SA officially opens new grease plant

FUCHS Lubricants South Africa has officially opened a R125-million grease plant expansion at its factory in Isando, Gauteng. Paul Deppe, MD of FUCHS Lubricants South Africa, says the project has been almost three years in the making with FUCHS investing in a state-of-the-art grease plant that will manufacture a large variety of specialty grease grades. “FUCHS sees the importance and demand for speciality grease growing significantly and want to be in a position to support this increase in demand from our customers. But importantly, the reasons for building the new grease plant is not only for capacity, but to inject new levels of process excellence and quality into our grease manufacturing.” “As one of the most automated and advanced grease plants in the FUCHS organisation, and indeed the world, we will be looking to export grease from this plant across Africa and to other parts of the world,” he says. “Importantly there have been no staff redundancies as a result of the automation of the plant, but what it has done is create the need for staff with higher skill levels. To this end, we identified existing staff comprising grease makers, a supervisor, maintenance engineer and production manager who were all sent to Germany for training.” The project is a collaboration between South African and German engineers, and system and component suppliers. The project team was made up of a technical team from FUCHS Lubricants South Africa and FUCHS Germany who were responsible for the process design of the plant. DRA was appointed to project manage, design, procure and construct the plant. The automation of the plant was contracted to a FUCHS supplier from Germany. “This is the start of significant

Future expansion in capacity as well as future grease technologies, which are under development in the FUCHS Group’s R&D laboratories, were also considered during the plant design phase.

investment in upgrading our plant and equipment to meet the demands of our customers for ever-increasing quality and responsiveness,” says Deppe. 30 different greases are planned to be manufactured in the plant. The plant consists of autoclave and open reactor technology to manufacture grease soap which is then finished in a number of finishing kettles. “The plant design and automation conforms to FUCHS latest standards worldwide and ensures that the quality of grease produced is of the highest standards. The plant will give FUCHS Lubricants South Africa the ability to consistently and repeatably manufacture standard and complex thickener greases to meet the needs of customers for many years to come,” says Deppe. ❂

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