Komatsu's new SigmaDozer

[9420pullpan]

i have read about this new blade design that Komatsu came up with and i was wondering has anyone ran with one of these new dozer blades.

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[Countryboy]

What is the new design supposed to accomplish?

[9420pullpan]

here is the link to a pdf file that explains it

http://www.komatsu.com/CompanyInfo/csr/2006/pdf/2006eco_20_e.pdf

the info is on page 3

[Mike J]

I think it was Construction equipment magazine that wrote an article about it, they compared an older 155 to the new one with the new blade. If I remember right they dug a trench with both machines with 2 opperators each taking a turn in each machine, the newer 155 was faster and used less fuel then the previous model.

[Countryboy]

Makes you wonder if the other manufacturers will follow with odd looking blades.

[Big Iron]

from the picture it sure dosen't leave much of a windrow does it. i have always liked their smaller (d-38, d-41, d-65) dozers, they were well balanced and had plenty of power.

[Dozerboy]

Cool I would like to try one out.

[9420pullpan]

here is a pdf file of the brochure of the komatsu 155 and on page #3 it shows the comparrison of both blades you can see the difference check it out

http://www.cimertex.pt/fotos/produtos/1150128270d155ax-6.pdf

[Wulf]

Nice pics... The second picture in the first post shows that with the pitch cylinders in the digging position the centre section of the blade is lower than the corner bits so the centre carries out most of the cutting, the mold board radius rolls the material and the wings control the spillage. Once the machine gets rolling and into direct drive you get really high production and low fuel costs

If the blade concept is adopted in the larger machines D9,D10, D11 class Caterpillar will have some catching up to do no doubt.

[Mass-X]

The outfit I'm working for just got one of the new 155A-6's last week. We already have a 155A-5 with a standard blade. I've spent around 60 hours in the new machine.

I've spent the last couple weeks doing a lot of finishing slopes, 2:1 and 4:1 road shoulders with topsoil and some 3:1 and 3.5:1 retention ponds slopes in rock/clay.

For finishing work, I prefer the standard blade. It's straight all the way across and gives you a good wide swath of even grade with each push. The new design seems better suited for hogging large amounts of material. In my limited experience, it would be more fitting on a larger machine used for big dirt work. But that may simply be due to the fact we do our finishing work with the 155's and use the bigger dozers (275+) for the production work.

I haven't noticed a lot of difference between windrow size of the straight blade versus the new design.

When I get some more time with the two machines moving more dirt, not just finishing, I'll be able to form a better opinion of the overall performance of the new design.

As far as machine performance, the only difference I can tell is slightly faster reverse speeds of the new machine. The older machine actually seems to shift smoother to me, but again, I don't have much time on it.

[Mass-X]

I've put another 80-90 hours on the new SigmaDozer, mostly stripping and stockpiling topsoil. I've noticed that the SigmaDozer right next to the straight blade will out-push is, but not by a whole lot. The new blade does seem to hold onto a little more material than the straight blade, but there's not much of a discernable difference.

I'm skeptical the new blade design will really catch on.

The biggest difference I have noticed is an increase in bottom-end power in the newer machine. While excavating a retention pond, a CAT 345C was cutting the grade and casting the material (clay/breccia mix) to the side, where I was pushing it up out of the end of the pond (14' from floor of pond to hinge of slope). The "older" machine really struggled to push more than half a load up out of the pond. With the newer machine, it could handle a full load of material.