The quarry and construction vehicle market is complex, because of the many applications: vehicles with two, three or four axles with or without all-wheel drive; a wide range of power; trucks and tractors; light or oversized models; and special variants for special outfits. The recently introduced Iveco Trakker is a work tool designed to meet every kind of extreme off-road mission on wheels ranging from 18 ton to 72 ton.
The real innovation with this truck is mainly the Stralis-based cabin, resulting from the work carried out with great determination, in collaboration with the dealers and customers who took part in the design, to improve its driving comfort and the life onboard – which is now widely acknowledged as being vitally important to productivity and safety. The Iveco Trakker range is wider than ever. It boasts a product range, in both left and right hand drive that allows customers to tailor the product to their specific mission. The range includes two engines (Cursor 8 and Cursor 13) and two cabins (Active Day and Active Time). The trucks were designed to support bodybuilding activities through a wide range of transmission and direct engine driven PTOs, electrical connections available both within the cab and on the chassis and the CANopen data bus expansion module. The CANopen gateway gives access to the in-vehicle networks and provides also firewall functionality.
Body builders have very different requirements. The most popular outfit is certainly the tipper body, but there are also some very specific applications, such as cement mixers that carry concrete ready for use. Many have platforms, often fitted with handling cranes. Clear from the start is the fact that body builder intervention will be required, if not for the tractor models but certainly for the rigid models. The heavy-duty makes life easy for the body builder with both electrical and mechanical provision for the body building process:

• A range of transmission and direct engine driven PTOs are available for customers to order. With the body builder expansion module up to three PTOs can be controlled and programmed for specific engine speed options to suit each PTO;

• For customers wishing to have PTOs fitted that are not available to order, a PTO management facility is available which provides the necessary controls and electrical relays mounted inside the vehicle cab;

• Body builders electrical connections are provided both within the cab and on the chassis frame to provide power for body lights and accessories;

• A feature of the expansion module is to provide a pre-installed CANopen network for exchange of data if required.

The automation of the forestry industry has reached a very high level, what is expected to continue. The more strongly the work cycles are geared to modern harvesters and other operating machinery, the more sensitively they react to technical problems. The teams often work far away from service stations and must be able to count on no problems arising during the operations. Any fault means a suspension of work and reduces the productivity.
In order to ensure the availability of the mobile operating equipment, the manufacturers are developing strategies for preventive error diagnostics. The aim is to detect problems before they arise. The item of equipment must be viewed as a complete system, because diesel engine and hydraulics influence one another and only jointly provide a realistic picture of the state of the equipment. For in the forest it does not matter which component fails, if the equipment is non-operable as a result. The aim of diagnostics is achieved, if all items of information come together and are presented to the personnel in a comprehensible form.

Maintenance of the machine

By the elimination of potential error sources and permanent monitoring of the condition of the equipment by condition monitoring systems (CMS), many stoppages of forestry equipment can be prevented. For wear or heavy stressing of a component becomes apparent beforehand in most cases. Prompt recognition permits preventive measures, as a result of which the availability of the equipment increases.
The on-board electronics (OBE) from Bosch Rexroth uses sensors built into the individual component, which record important data on site and forward them to the central controller. The latter monitors all drive systems and ensure the optimum interaction of all the components. The operator sees on the display the information that he requires for his work. If a problem becomes apparent, the controller can warn the operator or the service personnel by specific indications on the display.
...