Bonfiglioli drives support winch system.

The Falcon Winch Assist is a winch system for excavators from the New Zealand engineering and manufacturing company DC Equipment and is achieving international notice because of its high levels of safety, reliability and efficiency. Its features make it suitable for tethered earthmoving machines to haul felled trees on slopes up to 45deg.

The hydraulic winch uses a pair of high-performance Bonfiglioli 715C crawler drives, which can be fitted to a broad range of excavators of more than 30t. The hydraulic winch assist machine is housed in the rear of the crawler vehicle where Bonfiglioli’s compact but torque-dense, 85,000Nm capacity 715C crawler drive is suitable for challenging tasks. In addition to being used in tethered applications for felled trees, it can be used for digging, loading and shovelling in demanding situations, with high levels of safety achieved by features and operating alerts built in to ensure the security of operators and enable them to concentrate on the task in hand.

The twin drives 715C in each Falcon Winch Assist unit are incorporated into an open loop, single-drum hydraulic system featuring brake safety. The Falcon Winch Assist has a primary hydraulic braking system for maximum control to achieve consistent rope tension – minimizes tension spikes. An emergency backup braking system uses two Bonfiglioli integrated planetary gear box brakes for a double redundancy backup braking system. The hydraulic and electrical safety system of the Falcon Winch Assist were designed to ensure the system remains in a safe operating stat and to prevent shock loading, because of a system communication monitoring, drum speed control and alerts that warn of machine failures and activate automatic emergency braking.

Reliability of the multipurpose Falcon Winch Assist is advanced by the use of twin Bonfiglioli 715C planetary gearboxes proven in tough industrial applications, including mobile cranes and milling machines. They are employed in industries including agriculture, construction equipment, mining and energy, forestry, food processing, primary production, land and water transportation, power generation and transmission and renewable energy.

The strong local presence and prompt delivery were the other important factors in the choice of Bonfiglioli drives. The company is expanding its organisation in New Zealand with a focus on engineering and service to offer increasingly customised solutions tailored to the needs of individual customers.

The new Bonfiglioli CAE team (Customer Application Engineering) operating in Australia and New Zealand is supported by strong global R&D, 3770 professionals, 20 branches and 14 production plants worldwide.