STEELWRIST and Rototilt have jointly announced ambitions of achieving ‘global interchangeability’ between work tools with integrated oil couplings within the Symmetrical standard.
The move comes as the market for fully automatic quick couplers continues to grow and questions about interchangeability between different manufacturers becomes an increasingly important topic.
The two manufacturers revealed that the aim is based on Symmetrical quick couplers (S-type). The main goal of the Symmetrical standard has been to safeguard interchangeability between manufacturers of quick couplers, tiltrotators, buckets and work tools.
The main reasons for forming an alliance are to increase safety, flexibility and efficiency; strive for a competitive and open industry standard that is not controlled by a single producer; and to make it cost efficient to retrofit adaptor brackets to used and new buckets and work tools.
The ambition is that the alliance should be open for other manufacturers that have developed compatible solutions to join.
“When we now launch and extend our QuickChange range of full automatic quick couplers it was only natural to build on the Symmetrical standard, which we have followed since 20 years, that was already compact, relatively lightweight and robust,” said Anders Jonsson, CEO of Rototilt Group AB. “With the addition of oil couplings and an electrical interface it will be unrivalled on the international market.”
Stefan Stockhaus, CEO of Steelwrist AB added, “We clearly see that there is a need for the alliance, as our SQ range have been booming since we launched almost three years ago. The main reason why we have been working to create the alliance is that we do not believe in locking customers into proprietary solutions that they must live with forever.”
More details will be confirmed later in the year.
