The Customised Konecranes SMV 60-1500 Truck
To celebrate 21 years of our involvement in the UK heavy lift market, we are running “Truck of the Month” a series of 12 features spread over 12 months with 12 machines that have shaped our history, our present and that also represent our future. We have reached the half-way point and this month we wind the clock back to 2005 when Coopers supplied the largest-ever forklift and mostly highly-customised machine Coopers have ever supplied
June – Konecranes SMV 60-1500 (The Customised one)
The then Tata Speciality Steels manufacturing facility in Rotherham South Yorkshire produced some of the highest quality steels for, amongst others, the aircraft engine and Formula 1 industries where steel composition and chemical content of they steel was critical. The steel was formed in blooms, ingots billets and bars and post-manufacturing, the cooling process was a critical component in the finished product quality. With steel literally glowing red with temperatures exceeding 800 degrees, the steel products, which could be as long as 12m, could warp and bend if handled with a traditional forklift.
Enter the experience of Cooper who, with the collaboration of the SMV engineers in Sweden and the logistics provider in Rotherham, Heckett MultiServ who would eventually own the machines, came up with a solution. This involved a 60 tonne capacity forklift with a 10m wide carriage with 7 forks – the 1750mm pitch of each fork being specified accurately to ensure the product would not distort away from flat during the handling process. Whilst side-shift was available, each individual fork, was fixed in order the pitch could never be adjusted. Given the extreme heat involved, front-end protection was given to the front-end hoses and operators were advised that the time the forks were in contact with the steel must be limited to 2 minutes to ensure heat transfer to the fork be restricted. Given the significant weight of the combined forks and carriage which would be load-side of the front wheels, the machine was a 60 tonne unit at 1500mm load centres although, with just 1800mm long forks, this load centre was never breached.
Machine was specified with a. 400kw Scania 12 litre engine in conjunction with a Clark 40000 series transmission and Kessler D111 front axle. The wheels, at 21.00 x 35 on the fronts, remain the largest wheels that Cooper have supplied on a forklift truck
Coopers would supply 2 x 60 tonne and 2 x 54 tonne machines to Rotherham on a single supply contract which would also involve magnets without a traditional ‘garden shed’ generator pack. The largest machine supplied until then being some 52-tonne units delivered, by Coopers, to the Scunthorpe steel works. The 60 tonne machines have since been replaced but the supply and specification criteria remains much the same as Cooper specified back in 2005. It was Cooper’s experience, creativity and project management that delivered arguably the most unique and highly customised forklift in the UK.
SMV 60-1200 – The customised one
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