With the new couplers from Wedgelock, changing hoses can be carried out without having to worry about oil spills, lost time or difficulty with releasing hydraulic system pressures.
For decades, having to get in and out of an excavator cabin to change hydraulic hoses has been the bane of an excavator operator’s workday.
But thanks to Wedgelock Equipment, fighting with inclement weather, battling tight or fiddly hydraulic couplers, cleaning up messy oil spills or dragging mud throughout the cabin can all be things of the past.
The company has long been synonymous with making super-safe excavator hydraulic couplers, and it has used all of its 40 years of coupler manufacturing expertise in developing and refining its latest design: one that can be equipped with both an automatic hydraulic and electrical connector coupler system.
Although instant connect hydraulic systems are not that new and have been used in agricultural applications for some years, there’s been very little development of this technology for excavators.
Wedgelock Australia’s General Manager Andrew La Frenz said the concept was a “no- brainer”.
“Automatically engaging multiple hydraulic and/or GPS cabling lines allows an operator to use a multitude of attachments, all of which can be used on-the-fly, without having to get out of the cabin,” he said.
“No more oil spills, lost time or difficulty with releasing hydraulic system pressure – operators can just disconnect their attachment then connect to their next one and keep on working”.
The most recent application for this new generation of Wedgelock couplers has been for rockbreaker-to-dig bucket transitions, principally for drainage that is being laid in very rocky ground.
However, Wedgelock’s customers who see the benefits of super quick hydraulic connections have been requesting that additional attachments and buckets also be modified with this new system.
“Having one excavator able to perform multiple tasks faster has also meant job sites can have fewer machines on site,” Andrew said.
“The Wedgelock team is clearly excited about the new coupler.
“We’ve had two very large Victoria based civil contracting companies using these QuickFlow Couplers for a couple of years now and we’ve been working alongside them, constantly fine- tuning the design to a stage now where we have got a product that’s safe, reliable and robust enough to handle the toughest conditions.
“We’ve also established a very robust support network around the product too which ensures that any downtime will be minimal.”
Andrew said that other coupler manufacturers that have adopted similar technology had tended to only use it within their own propriety designs.
“So you also need to buy that manufacturer’s attachment to work with their hydraulic coupler. However, Wedgelock’s coupler is different in that it has maintained a traditional coupler design and then modified existing attachment pickups to accept the QuickFlow hydraulic and GPS cables,” he said.
For more information, call Wedgelock Australia Pty Ltd on 1800 731 757