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One Tip per Day

28th May 1965, Page 65
28th May 1965
Page 65
Page 66
Page 65, 28th May 1965 — One Tip per Day
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NEW EAGLE CRUSHLOAD MK. III HAS 75 CU. YD. CAPACITY

(Above) This general view of the Crushload III shows the action and layout of the crushing barriers and the position of the operating rams.

By R. D. Cater

TEAR by year the volume-to-weight ratio of refuse collected by municipalities grows. This is a direct result of the demand by the public for packaged goods, and it has affected in no small way the design of vehicles used for this work. Another item that has assisted in the lightening of the load of the refuse vehicle is the setting up of smokeless zones and the increasing use of central-heating systems which are fired by means other than solid fuel. Thus it is necessary for the refuse collection vehicle to be able to compress its cargo into a body approximately one third of the size that would be needed to carry the same refuse in its loose form.

For about three years the Eagle Engineering Co. Ltd.. of Warwick has been building its Crushload refuse collect or, and in an effort to produce a vehicle that will be able to do a complete day's collecting without the need to travel to and from a tip more than once, it has designed the Mk. III 75cu.-yd. version of its very successful 35and 50-cu.-yd. Mk. II. By skilful designing it has been possible to keep the dimensions of the vehicle to within inches of the overall length of the smaller models, although it is wider by at least six inches. By utilizing the Seddon six-wheeler chassis with .Maxartic suspension it has proved possible to overcome the problem of overloading the rear axles.

. The Eagle company has carried out a large number of experiments with the equipment forming the Crushload unit, and as a result of this has found the ideal angles at which the carriers must operate to avoid packing the refuse into such a solid block as would create damage to the body, This in turn has enabled the hydraulic pressure, used to power the cruShing rams, to be considerably reduced, thus minimizing wear and tear on the unit as a whole.

The body, which is constructed of steel, is strongly braced and mounted on a sturdy sub-frame. ft is tapered towards the front to 'assist the compressed load to free itself when being

tipped. (Continued overtop One Tip per Day To obtain the correct centre of gravity it has been found necessary to design the front bulkhead of the body to slope forward, which results in a rather unorthodox shape of crew cab. Nevertheless, it is expected that the Crushload will be able to carry 10 tons of refuse—and as this is about the average amount collected by one gang in a• day, it would seem that Eagle has reached its goal of providing a vehicle which would complete a full day's work with only one visit to the local tip. Naturally, this will save time; but more important, it eliminates the need for expensive and unsightly load-transfer depots required for the operation of the large transporters to distant tips. In addition, the time lost by the gang whilst a smaller vehicle does its two or more trips to the tip can be at least halved.

With regard to the type of refusethat the Crushload can accommodate, I was told by the Eagle engineers that it had recently won an order on the strength of the fact that it successfully devoured a piano, still operating at its normal preset speed of six to eight strokes per minute. Other scrap that it will accommodate includes gas and electric cookers.

The crushing and loading equipment consists of two barriers linked together to a cross-shaft by means of fabricated links. This shaft is powered by two double-acting hydraulic rams. situated .1.12 at each side of the unit. The crushing barrier is the top one and this— as can be seen in the accompanying drawing—is curved, allowing for correct positioning of the barrier face in relation to the compression bulkhead. The loading barrier is straight, but • angled at 45 to the floor line of the body. It is this angle that Eagle claims to be the answer to the problem of excessive packing of the load creating damage to the body in the form of distortion. Producing a rolling action in the refuse, the loading ram tends to force the pre-compressed bulk upwards over the top Of that already inside the body. This also can be seen in the drawing.

The hydraulic equipment is manufactured by Denison, Den i and is of the elect ro-hydraulic type. The controls are nothing more than electric switches; these operate solenoids, which in turn control the hydraulic valves. This system considerably reduces the amount of piping that is required and enables the controls to be of a simple, push-button type. Again, replacement of the controls is made easier by the fact that it is only necessary to make an electrical connection, and only when there is a failure in the hydraulic system does the need arise to disturb this part.

Arranged automatically to lift clear of the rear end of the body when this is tipped, the Crushload unit is hinged by two links to the top of the body, and has two links connected to the rear corner posts. These are so designed that when the lifting cables are shortened, the bottom of the unit is forced away from the body, thus opening the rear end for clearance of the load. The shortening of the cables is automatic. As the tipping gear raises the body, the cables—which are attached to the swinging links of the Crushload unit at the rear end and to the chassis of the vehicle at the front end—are run over two pulley-wheels mounted on the bottom of the bodY. They embrace a longer distance between the two points and in effect are shortened. This is clearly shown in the drawing. It is expected that the Maxartic suspension is going to provide ample traction for negotiating the surfaces of reasonable tips.

The Crushload Mk. III will be shown by the Eagle company at the Institute of Public Cleansing Conference at Scarborough next week.

Crushload on Trial

In a trial on Monday of The neW Eagle 75-cu.-yd. Crushload refuse collector in the Great Barr smokecontrolled area of Aldridge, Staff, five loaders of the Aldridge Urba District Council worked in conjun tion with an Eagle test driver in a normal routine kerb-side collectio exercise to establish that the vehiel afforded an increase in payload pr portional to its increased bulk capacit compared with the Crushload 50-cu, yd. collector employed by the Council. Although the 9-ton load of refuse collected was at least 1 ton less than the load that the vehicle is considered capable -of transporting this was attributed to low-weight ashless contents of the bins and was at least 3 tons (50 per cent) in excess of the average load collected by the 50-cu.-yd. machine. About 850 bins were coi. lected from 650 premises.

The standard rear-end loadin mechanism is employed and the pressure exerted on the refuse when the last 50 bins are being loaded is increased from the normal worki pressure of 1,000/1,500 lb. per sq.

to about 2,500 lb. per sq. in. The Seddon 6 x 2 20/6/400 Leylandengined chassis provided more than adequate manceuvrability on thc housing estate and handled well on the rough surface of the tipping site. Later Crushload vehicles will be mounted on Seddon 22/6/470 chassis powered by AEC engines.

Eagle engineers point out that the trial proved the ability of the standard loading mechanism efficiently to fill a high-capacity body and claim that the availability of a collector of this size will obviate the need for a transfer station and the use of a bulk vehicle.


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