Room to Swing a Cat?

With its reduced boom length the M318D MH Waste Handler is ideally suited to the life of an indoor Cat For years waste and recycling operators have all too often had to make do with equipment that was never really designed for the job. More recently, with its increased focus on producing specially tailored equipment designed and marketed with the sector in mind, that's something that Caterpillar has aimed to address. But what does the owner of the very first M318D MH Waste Handler off the production line think of it? By Ben Messenger While storing and processing wastes indoors makes odour and dust control more effective, it also presents its own challenges in terms of waste handling equipment. For many inside waste facilities the boom length of traditional material handlers poses a potential risk to the ceiling. Having listened to numerous requests from its waste and recycling customers seeking a material handler with a reduced boom length, Caterpillar set about creating the M318D MH Waste Handler. According to Hendrik Posselt, product manager at German Caterpillar dealer, Zeppelin Caterpillar, when the company took its prototype of the model to the 2012 IFAT exhibition in Munich, it created quite a stir, with customers eager to snap one up for their waste management operations. Among those enticed by the machine was Jochen Kilb, managing director of Frankfurt based Commercial and Industrial (C&I) waste and recycling company, Kilb Entsorgung. So impressed by the concept was Kilb that six months ago his company took delivery of the very first M318D MH Waste Handler. While equipment manufacturers are usually keen to explain why their latest creation is the perfect solution for one application or another, it's always good to hear from the people who actually use those machines. That's why it was with some interest that I've taken the opportunity to see the new Cat operating in its natural habitat - Kilb's C&I waste facility just outside of Frankfurt. The facility processes C&I waste collected by private companies and municipalities to create a Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF). This is then utilised by the 675,000 tonne per year combined heat and power waste to energy facility at the nearby Industriepark Höchst. Kilb explains that when the company started at its current facility back in 1990 he hadn't imagined that trucks and excavators would get so large, so they bought a conventional earth moving excavator with a variable angle boom but a drop nose stick. It had never really been designed for the job. Posselt explains that earth movers are designed to push and material handlers to lift. The two tasks place different stresses on the boom, which has resulted in structural differences. With the variable angle boom of the earth mover, Kilb was only able to use a drop nose stick which he says restricted him to using a very compact 'orange peel' grapple. That made removing recyclables and contaminants more difficult. Kilb says that because of this, what he really always wanted was a materials handler. However, because the roof of his facility was only 9 metres high all the machines on the market were too large. When he saw the M318D MH Waste Handler at IFAT, he says that was immediately impressed with the modifications that would allow for the flexibility he required. Flexible friend The grapple attachment increases flexibility and enables large items to be easily removed According to Posselt, one of the reasons the machine generated such excitement in the waste industry, which has a diverse range of sometimes specialist requirements, is its flexibility. "A request from our customers was to have a machine that can work indoors. In Germany everything is getting more and more politically green. Landfill is forbidden. Waste has to be handled indoors because of smells, so you have to have machines which can operate indoors. We have existing buildings that cannot be changed. Therefore the machines have to be changed," he explains. "You can buy a larger MH and do something like lift limitation or height limitation, but it's better to have something that perfectly fits into the building. Therefore Caterpillar brought out this machine. You can also choose this machine with the wider undercarriage or some different sticks like the drop nose and configure it how the customer likes it. It's very flexible," adds Posselt. Technical specifications Designed with confined spaces in mind, both indoors and out, the Waste Handler features a boom with a shorter pin-to-pin length of 5.35 meters, compared with the conventional M318D MH's dimension of 6.4 meters. The compact material handling boom is designed for use either with the 4.2 metre stick or the 4.9 metre drop nose stick, and features a welded, box-section design with thick, multi-plate fabrications in high stress areas for increased durability. Further to the shortened boom, Posselt points out that the width of the undercarriage has also been narrowed from the 2.99 metres of the standard machine to 2.55 metres. In its Waste Handler guise, Caterpillar says that the M318D MH's purpose-built undercarriage preserves the strength of the standard undercarriage, but adapts the structure to the machine's specialised application. For example, the heavy-duty swing-bearing tower is now centred on the undercarriage, placing it equidistant from axles and stabilisers for symmetry and balance, whether working over the front or rear. In addition, the tower is larger to accommodate the hydraulic cab-riser swing bearing. In addition to features that enable the Waste Handler to work in confined areas, Caterpillar also offers an optional Waste Handling package. It says this specifically equips the machine to work efficiently in waste transfer stations or other dusty applications. The Waste Handling option features an automatic, hydraulically driven fan that cleans debris from the radiator by periodically reversing airflow after a specified interval. This is set manually by the operator at between two and 60 minute intervals. In addition, a dense wire-mesh hood complements the automatic fan by facilitating optimum cooling and reducing radiator clogging. A new seal has also been added around the engine hood. For additional engine protection, a pre-cleaner separates and ejects debris from engine intake air before the air reaches the machine's primary air cleaner. Real world performance? The technical specs are certainly impressive, but I'm visiting the Kilb Entsorgung facility to see the machine in action and find out just how it performs in the real world. To do that I need to find out exactly what the owner of the very first M318D MH Waste Handler thinks of the machine. Since taking delivery Kilb says he has been impressed with the ability to use the grapple to easily remove large items of metal and recyclables, or as demonstrated on the day of my visit, other contaminants such as mattresses prior to processing the incoming C&I waste into RDF. Unlike earth movers, specialised material handlers are designed to lift materials Posselt explains that Caterpillar is also currently looking to enlarge the grapple to further increase flexibility. However, that's governed by the tipping point and the size of grapple it would be possible to fit would depend on the material being handled. For example, with scrap metal only a relatively small grapple could be used, whereas for other, lighter wastes it would be possible to utilise a much larger grapple. But it's not just in flexibility that the machine is a big improvement for Kilb. Operator comfort has increased significantly too, he says. In addition to the joystick controls, this is also aided by the significantly reduced noise levels produced by the low RPM that the machine's 130 kW 6.6 litre EU Stage IIIA compliant C6.6 engine operates at. According to Caterpillar the engine also offers increased performance and reliability while reducing fuel consumption. Conclusions Posselt explains that while construction equipment will remain Caterpillar's bread and butter, the company is increasingly targeting more niche markets that would benefit from customised machines for more specialised tasks. As part of that effort it founded its Industrial Waste Group around two years ago dedicated for the recycling industry. "They want to dedicate more into this business because it's growing and they have to participate. So they founded the new group to do the right products, the right configuration and the right marketing to the customers, and therefore they want to grow it in each sector of this business," he explains. Having seen Kilb's M318D MH Waste Handler operating in the confined spaces it was specially modified to cope with, as well as hearing from the man himself about the benefits it's brought to his business, it would seem that with this model at least, Caterpillar has hit the mark. With its history of developing new products that have changed the way industries such as construction and demolition operate, its success at developing a specialised waste handler is unlikely to be a one-off. And that can only be a good thing for the waste and recycling industry.