Kobelco Construction Machinery has launched a 70t crawler crane called the Mastertech 7070 SE Edition in the Japanese market.

The Mastertech 7070 SE Edition is the successor of the 65t rated 7065, and fills the gap between the 55t and 80t crawlers in the same series. Based on the CKE 700, introduced in Europe in January 2002, it is designed for lift work as well as for foundation and civil engineering applications. Kobelco said that it plans to sell 25 of the new 7070 this year.

The new crane’s winches have multi-disc wet brakes, developed by Kobelco. Kobelco says that it is the first crane manufacturer to develop this type of winch on its own, and this is the first time these winches have been used on lift cranes for sale in the domestic Japanese market. While their application on lifting cranes is new, the winches are already being used in the Kobelco BM series of heavy-duty crawler cranes for foundation and civil engineering work. Kobelco says that wet brakes reduce maintenance costs because unlike band brakes, they require no band adjustment and lining changes.

The wet brake and gear reducer are installed within the wire take-up drum to save space and improve operation. The drum length was expanded to 545mm, and 22mm diameter wire rope wound in one layer runs to 40m in length, an improvement of 25% over conventional drums. This contributes to smoother winding of the wire rope, Kobelco claims.

The 7070 has a low emission engine that clears Japan’s standards for secondary exhaust and also meets secondary emission regulations in Europe and the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) regulations in the USA.

European CEN regulations mean that the CKE 700 has more safety features than the Mastertech 7070, including a device for preventing over pay-out of the rope from the drum, and a guard on the cab roof. Another difference, determined by customer preference, is that the the CKE 700 has a self-removal type of counterweight, while the 7070 has a stack type counterweight without self-removal. Japanese customers prefer to use an assist crane for counterweight assembly and disassembly, Kobelco said.

Kobelco has also unveiled two heavy duty cranes – the 70t BM 700HD SE Edition and the 80t BM 800HD SE Edition. These two machines are based on the Mastertech 7070.

The 12 models in the Mastertech series range from 50t to 800t.

The five current models in the BM series have lifting capacities ranging from 50t to 150t.