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Tuesday, June 2, 2015

140 Ton Custom Built Hitachi Demolition Excavator ("the Big Girl") Devours a 10 Storey Hospital building in 6 months!

Over the past few months we have had the pleasure to apply our Mobile HoseFixing services to some of the largest demolition equipment ever seen on the Gold Coast.
It started with us fixing rotation hoses, muncher hoses and pulveriser hoses on a 60 ton Komatsu and then on a 70 ton Hitachi long arm. Muncher hoses for the 70 ton were 1" inside diameter had to be rated from 4000 and 5000  PSI working pressure.

After a couple of months we heard rumors that " a Big Girl" was on her way to site.  And arrive she did. The Big Girl took 2 weeks to assemble and once complete weighed in at 140 metric tons.

The Big Girl was built in Japan by Hitachi as an excavator and then shipped to England for special modifications to convert her to demolition duties. Australia has very strict rules when it comes to demolition,  so the fancy and speedy collapsing of a building in a cloud of dust and airborne particles by detonating explosives is pretty rare these days.

The Big Girl is equipped with Extra wide tracks, a 3 stage telescopic boom, 4 hydraulic Pumps generating pressures between 200 and 340 Bar (3000 and 5000 PSI) and a 800 liter hydraulic oil tank.
She does not swing a wrecking ball or use her huge mass to push or crush a building but rather she uses specialised attachments to bite, pulverise, munch and persistently gnaw the building down to the ground.
These special attachments require very high hydraulic pressures to operate effectively and we have had to assemble hoses, fittings and valves rated to 400 Bar (6000 PSI). Hoses designed to operate at these pressures can be reinforced with up to 6 layers of spirally wound high tensile steel wire.


Repairs and Maintenance on the Big Girl Elevated Work Platform Required.