Big – bigger – 60 tonnes: KAUP designs, produces and supplies the largest rotators for fork lift trucks

Aschaffenburg, 21. April 2021 – A project of superlatives and simultaneously a milestone in the industry: KAUP GmbH & Co. KG (KAUP) developed, produced and supplied two of the largest attachments for fork lift trucks in the world to a steel works in the Netherlands. The largest rotators in Europe have been in use there for several months and have completed thousands of load cycles in the meantime with no problems. The task: emptying extremely heavy slag containers.

The dimensions of the attachments created several challenges for designers and engineers at KAUP. Because, although the engineering company from Aschaffenburg is familiar with special designs and large dimensions: 13 tonnes empty weight, 4,600 mm width, 3,475 mm height and 45 tonnes load capacity are not commonplace even in the lower Main valley in Bavaria. Nevertheless, the largest independent producer of attachments successfully delivered the huge rotators in record time. It didn’t even take a year from initial contact to putting into service.

Designers overcome challenges

Alongside the sheer size and the tight schedule, the project confronted the KAUP team with some interesting challenges, as designer Bernd Ackermann reports. “The adapted flanged couplings and the completely new welded fitting were two decisive factors”, explains the experienced designer. “Because we also hadn’t designed anything like this before.” But after about ten weeks’ design time and permanent coordination with the customer, KAUP was able to begin with the challenging production process. For example, the forks had to be welded manually to the huge base plate in a laborious and complex process. Before the challenging dispatch of the huge machines, there were additionally intensive tests of both 60T391 on test rigs built especially for this project.