Customer case

Excavator bucket attachments made in Hardox® 500 Tuf, ready for a hard day’s work

February 02, 2021 6 min read

Case details

Product Hardox® 500 Tuf

Country Denmark

Company Sjørring Maskinfabrik A/S

Industry Yellow goods and construction

Brand program Hardox® In My Body

Sjørring, the Danish bucket manufacturer, prides itself on delivering custom loader buckets to big-name equipment brands like Volvo CE, Hitachi Construction Machinery, Epiroc and Doosan Infracore Europe. A leading manufacturer of wheel loader buckets in Europe, they build more than 3,500 buckets each year. When the company decided to design a super-optimized line of low-weight excavator buckets, they turned to SSAB – and Hardox® 500 Tuf – for a solution.

In 2019, Sjørring got busy planning and designing the most durable, abrasion-resistant excavator bucket that can withstand high impact forces. Nearly a year later, the company was finally able to launch their own original line of weight-optimized excavator buckets – and sell directly to dealers.

A high-strength, low weight custom excavator bucket made in Hardox® 500 Tuf

High-strength, low-weight custom excavator bucket in Hardox^® 500 Tuf

Case details

Product Hardox® 500 Tuf

Country Denmark

Company Sjørring Maskinfabrik A/S

Industry Yellow goods and construction

Brand program Hardox® In My Body

Why two heads are better than one

In addition to this new venture producing their own custom excavator buckets, Sjørring has been working very closely with SSAB. Together, the two companies are developing an additional type of excavator bucket using SSAB’s newest generation of wear-resistant steel plate, Hardox^® 500 Tuf.

The cooperation between Sjørring and SSAB has been a natural development. Both companies have closely collaborated for many years, and Sjørring is the largest buyer of Hardox^® wear steel in Denmark. During the Hardox^® 500 Tuf project, both parties complemented each other well, each one bringing different strengths to the table.

A bucket manufacturer with decades of experience, Sjørring has been able to supply a wealth of knowledge about the design and production aspects of manufacturing buckets. Every bucket that goes through Sjørring’s design and production has been optimized for robotic welding, and makes a perfect fit for construction machinery.

“During this process, SSAB has provided several design input ideas based on their extensive knowledge about abrasive wear resistance and the special properties of their wear steel, as well as great support throughout the project,” Klaus Kalstrup, CEO of Sjørring says.

A custom excavator bucket being built using robotic welding

Sjørring builds buckets using an optimized robotic welding process for high productivity

Klaus Kalstrup, CEO of Sjørring

No waste, only high performance in excavator buckets

Test after test was performed and production experiments were implemented throughout the design process. Everything “unnecessary” was removed from the design of the bucket made from Hardox^® 500 Tuf – leaving only the simple and functioning core, and as few welding seams as possible.

Hardox^® 500 Tuf combines the best properties from Hardox^® 450 and Hardox^® 500 wear plate. The estimated relative service life for Hardox^® 500 Tuf is 85-100% longer than for Hardox^® 400 according to SSAB’s wear calculation software Hardox WearCalc, based on sliding wear with granite. Hardox^® 500 Tuf features a guaranteed impact energy of 27 J at -20°C (20 ft-lb at 4°F) and, for 20 mm plate, a typical value of 45 J at -40°C (33 ft-lb at -40°F). It also has an unusually narrow hardness window of 475-505 HBW.

A welder putting the torch to a custom excavator bucket made in Hardox® 500 Tuf

Hardox^® 500 Tuf can be welded using the same equipment as for other grades.

Light weight, heavy duty

“The design and the material provide our customers with an extraordinary light yet extremely durable excavator bucket, which can extend the service life of both the bucket and the excavator itself,” Klaus Kalstrup says.

Thanks to the combination of a highly optimized design and production capabilities, cooperation with SSAB, and the selected steel grade Hardox^® 500 Tuf, the benefits for end users are remarkable: lower fuel consumption, high durability, increased efficiency and overall longer bucket lifetime with less hassle due to repairs or downtime.

Mogens Jensen, excavator operator at the construction conglomerate Aarsleff Group, has this to say about the company’s custom excavator buckets:

”Even though the bucket can hold 150 liters more than my previous bucket, it still weighs approximately 200 kg less. The bucket feels very stable and I experience much less friction and the machine does not feel nearly as strained as before – even equipped with a tilt rotator. And since there are no wear packages on it, I no longer have to deal with material being stuck.”

Learn more about what this steel can do for your equipment on the Hardox^® 500 Tuf product page.