Extreme vehicles made by Hencon

  • Extreme vehicles from Hencon with SEW-EURODRIVE MOVIAXIS® servo inverter

    Vehicles for extreme circumstances

    Hencon opted for a powerful MOVIAXIS® multi-axes servo inverter with servo drives

Where conventional forklift trucks and tractors fail in their duties, the vehicles of Hencon come into action. In industries, like the aluminium industry, mining and forestry.

Hencon relies on the servo inverter technology and experience provided by SEW-EURODRIVE

Like in a restaurant with an open kitchen, one can look onto the factory floor through the glass wall from the Hencon office room. There are eight broad-shouldered vehicles, robust and mighty, in the characteristic yellow colour. Still before the summer holidays these will be shipped to remote corners in the world in order to carry out work that conventional tractors are not able to.

The Dutch company HENCON, located at Ulft – with 90 employees, and approximately 300 worldwide – is market leader in the field of special mobile vehicles. Where conventional forklift trucks and tractors fail in their duties, the Hencon vehicles come into action in branches, like the aluminium industry, mining and forestry. We are not overrun by these industries in The Netherlands, so Hencon is especially beating the drum abroad, with offices in Mozambique, South Africa, India and Russia and bases in China and Middle East.

Theo Lammers, managing director: “We started in 1956 with the production of vehicles for road construction, such as soil scraper machines. We introduced the side loader, a concept that is still applied worldwide in the steel and concrete industry.”

Unmanned vehicles

Also the aluminium industry demands special vehicles as the circumstances are rough. In the tropical temperatures, abrasive clouds of dust and strong magnetic fields ‘normal’ vehicles come off badly, but Hencon’s vehicles feel like gladiators in an arena.

Rudi Roth, project manager: “For a German customer, a specialist in aluminium scrap recycling, we developed and built two automatic guided vehicles together with loading station and peripheral equipment. These are operator-independent oven loading systems with exchangeable scrap containers. There is nobody in the cabine anymore.”

Lower energy costs

They are used for the transport of containers carrying 10 tons of aluminium scrap, travelling across of path of 250 m to the ovens. De AGV’s are 4,75 m wide, 9 m in length, 3,5 m tall and weigh 68 tons fully loaded. Because of the large capacity of the containers the oven does have to open its doors less frequently, thus saving energy costs.

The four sets of wheels are driven electrically by a diesel generator (200 kW installed power). The vehicles find their way by means of an advanced navigation system and interconnect through a WLAN.

Drive system

Rudi Roth: “SEW helped us calculating the entire drive system, i.e. the effect of friction of the rubber wheels and the weight of the vehicle inclusive of freight, and the selection of the correct components.”

The AGV is electrically controlled by an SEW MOVIAXIS® multi-axes servo inverter, consisting of a 75 kW supply module. Four asynchronous right-angle SEW servo drives (KF87DRL100L4) take care of the wheels control, whereas separate asynchronous servo motors type DRL132MC4 provide the travelling movements. For the hydraulic generator a 75 kW squirrel-cage induction motor type DRE280S4 with accompanying SEW MOVITRAC® B-inverter was supplied per AGV.

Theo Lammers: “The advantages of this construction are evident: All wheels are controllable, all routes are feasible. The maintenance is predictable and the operational costs are lower. We don’t take “impossible” for an answer. That’s typical of Hencon: Serving progress.”

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