A Liebherr duty cycle machine doesn’t miss a beat in a sand quarrying application.
DTB Equipment has deployed a Liebherr HS 895 HD duty cycle machine to help manage the excavations of a giant Victorian sand quarry in Lang, Lang Victoria It hasn’t missed a days’ work in three years.
Lang Lang is a small town with 1,500 residents in Victoria, situated 85 km south-east of Melbourne. Here, there is an extensive area rich in horizontal sand deposits which is being excavated, washed and processed for use in the Victorian construction industry.
DTB Equipment was started by Daryl Bradford in 1982. Since then, the business has been hiring equipment to mining companies, it has also held a number of major civil contracts and provided all the equipment for freeway and infrastructure projects. Bradford and his team have worked on coal mining projects in the La Trobe Valley supplying a fleet of 85t and 100t dump trucks for that sort of work, but for the last six years DTB equipment has been on the one site at Lang Lang excavating the sand for Pronto Concrete/Barro Group.
“This was a greenfield site when DTB Equipment undertook the contract to develop the sand mine and extract and wash the sand. The mine represents Melbourne’s sand supply well into the future.
“On a normal day we extract 5000 cubic meters of sand with the cable excavator and the HS 895 HD loads two Caterpillar 775 60t capacity dump trucks to extract the sand from a depth of 18m. The grab bucket manages five cubic meters or 10t per grab. It is from TGS a specialist grab bucket manufacturer from the Netherlands.
“The Liebherr HS 895 HD has been on site for three years. We have a long history with Liebherr product and as far as we are concerned, Liebherr is the leader in this type of cable excavator. Over the years, I have had a lot of experience with other types of Liebherr mining equipment including the large Liebherr excavators, so I have been very aware of the quality of the product over a long period of time,” said Bradford.
“I’ve been impressed with the performance of the cable excavator and Liebherr equipment in general, but I’ve also been impressed with the approach from the Liebherr team. There is always a willingness to help, they’ve been more than prepared to get involved in the project from the word go. From the delivery of the machine and its installation through to the operator training, they have been fantastic.
“The excavator is working solidly eight hours a day, 40 hours a week and it’s worked every day since we’ve owned the machine without a problem, it’s a reliable machine and a key element to our operation,” he said.
The Liebherr HS 895 HD – is a duty cycle machine with two 350 kN winches and manufactured in accordance with international standards. During the deployment in Australia it is handling 5000 cubic meters of sand per day. This high turnover is achieved by the HS 895 HD very short working cycles. With a swing angle of approx. 180° it requires only 45 seconds per cycle. The digging depth can be increased to 40 m, which compared to the hydraulic excavators, is an enormous advantage. The topsoil is removed in the traditional way by the hydraulic excavators, while the duty cycle machine makes full use of its higher working reach and excavates at depths that were unachievable before. Liebherr’s HS 895 HD is equipped with a mechanical round nose grab from TGS – The Grab Specialist B.V from the Netherlands. The grab, with a filling capacity of 5 cubic meter, can optimally penetrate very hard soils or interlocked material thanks to the specifically rounded shape and the grab teeth. A high filling ratio of the grab can therefore be achieved even under difficult conditions. In combination with the Liebherr machine the grab is ideal for this type of excavation application. The HS 895 HD is fitted with a tagline winch, which contributes to quick and precise operation of the clamshell grab.
Since the deeper layers are easily reachable for the duty cycle machine, not only more sand can be excavated, but the costs involved can also be considerably reduced. So far, the work extends over only a small part of the total surface area available.
Technical data: HS 895 HD
The HS 895 HD is a powerful machine in the 200tonne class. Thanks to its solid steel construction and its strong 12-cylinder 670kW diesel engine, the duty cycle crawler crane with grab bucket is ideal for material handling tasks. It can also be used as a carrier machine for various other applications.
A wide range of attachments means that the range of use of the Liebherr HS 895 HD crawler crane is almost unlimited; these include grabbers, drag buckets, diaphragm wall grabbers and pipe laying machines, as well as demolition and dynamic ground compaction.