Heavy equipment manufacturer Bell Equipment is expanding its Articulated Dump Truck range with the introduction of the B45D, which aims to fill the gap in the market that exists between the popular B40D and B50D trucks.Bell Equipment Product Marketing Manager: ADTs, Stephen Jones said there is a need in the marketplace for an ADT that has a larger payload than a 40-tonner, thereby providing more option to meet site and customer specific needs.
“Some of our competitors decided to fill this need in the market by marginally increasing the payload of their existing 40-tonner truck. However, we opted to introduce a completely new machine because our customer poll showed that they consider our B40D to be an optimised package in terms of efficiency, reliability and a match for production tools. In practice the B45 will take an additional scoop from a loading excavator as opposed to a mere specification upgrade.
“We’ve also chosen a different design philosophy with the B45D with our engineers opting to over-design to achieve top production benefits, unsurpassed durability and superior safety. The result is that the B45D is based on the B50D and, as such, its shares the same proven components that have been used in the 50-tonner since 2002. It is fitted with the powerful 16-litre Mercedes Benz OM502LA engine but has an output of 350kw as opposed to the 390kw rating of our flagship.“The diff ratio and final drive ration are the same as the B50D. Likewise the rod and barrel of the tip cylinders are also the same size as the larger truck, but with a shorter length to aid the tipping geometry. The width and low centre of gravity creates exceptional stability and the B45D is able to run on 29,5R25 tyres at full speed and with a load.”
Other key features are that the truck has wet disk braking on all six wheels and active front suspension is standard with comfort ride walking beams as an option on the rear.
From a production point of view, the B45D has a bin that is 17% wider than that of a B40D to provide an easier loading target and, more importantly, to ensure that full capacity of 25 cubic metres is actually reached. During representative production trials the B45D averaged seven scoops per load as opposed to its rivals, which only averaged six scoops, despite the addition of bin extensions.
Jones said: “This is largely because in reality the extra payload of the modified 40-tonners is not an additional bucket scoop and so the benefits of the extra payload are not realised. Narrower vehicles do also not actually achieve the full SAE loading due to differing material slope angle and spillage from the sides of the bin.”
The B45D is ideally suited to rugged mining, quarrying or bulk earthworks applications. Bell Equipment’s prototype B45D has been run at four test sites in South Africa as well as in the United Kingdom in muddy underfoot conditions typical of Europe, where it has surpassed all expectations.
Added Jones: “We’ve already conducted a customer poll among some of our top South African customers and the machine has been well received. We also had the B45D on stand at Intermat to gauge customer interest in Europe, where it created positive interest.”
