SHAW’S WIRE ROPES IRON TEST
Technology is making it easier and more productive for forestry operators to use machines and the Next Gen Caterpillar 323 road builder now working with Douglas Logging in Dargaville is a great example of how far we’ve come.
THE NEXT GENERATION CATERPILLAR 323 HAS JUST taken excavators into a whole new era and it’s going to win a lot of friends, old and new. Among the many all-new advances is the complete lack of switches and push buttons anywhere in the cab. Everything is controlled from the touch-screen sitting on the lower right-hand front pillar. Everything. The radio, air-con, systems and controls.
It can even automate the way an operator digs a hole, blades a surface and avoids hitting objects. It’s all computerised and, I’m sure, all set up for eventually being controlled remotely by tele-operation at some point in the future, although Cat isn’t saying anything about that right now.
While it’s not your typical forestry digger, being more of a construction machine, the Next Gen 323 actually works damn well in the bush and Dargaville-based Douglas Logging has been making good use of its technology for road building and skid site/landing construction since taking delivery late last year.
The Douglas team were the first forestry customers for the Next Gen Cat 323 in New Zealand that replaces the previous 323F model. What makes it really significant is that it is completely new from the ground up.
In fact, the Next Gen 323 is the first full redesign of the 20-tonne class Cat machines in almost a quarter of a century.
By starting with a clean sheet of paper, the design engineers were able to introduce a raft of new technology into these latest diggers to make them smarter and easier to use. Like getting rid of all the fussy switchgear that clutters the cab and replacing them with a single interface.
Makes for a very clean and streamlined interior, even if it does feel unusual to be sitting in a machine without any buttons to push or switches to flick. Actually, there is one button. It starts the engine.
But taking such a big leap into the future is not anything to be alarmed about, even if you are an old-school operator or someone who considers themselves technologically challenged, because it’s so easy to use.
The real advantage of a digger like this is that you can tailor it to suit the way you work, not the opposite, which is most appealing. And this is just the start. Expect all the equipment working in the forest to be just as technology rich and smart in the coming years, not just road builders.
Not only will it make machines much easier for current operators to use, it means that if we’re going to attract Generation Z (ie those born after 1995 who grew up with computers) into our industry, it’s machines like this that will provide the bait.
However, it wasn’t the tech stuff that led Pete and Brad Douglas to go for the Next Gen 323 in the first place.
They just wanted a replacement for the Cat 323F that had been slogging its guts out around Northland forests for the past five years. All that technology is just an added bonus.
Brad says: “It’s got some great technical features, but we were mainly after a digger that did the job as well as the old 323F and this one has been every bit as good.”
To make it work better for them in forestry applications, Douglas
Logging had a high and wide undercarriage fitted and extended the walk platforms on either side of the body on the new 323, in addition to the usual guarding undertaken by the MTL and Gough Engineering workshops in Rotorua. It also sits on 600mm single bar grouser tracks, in place of the standard triple grousers.
That means the 323 is not vulnerable when it ventures off the tracks onto rougher ground to prepare new skids and landings or tidy up after harvesting has been completed. The ground clearance has been raised from 470mm to 650mm and the more aggressive single grousers provide better grip on steep terrain.
The extra width of those walkway plates pushes the width of the Douglas machine from 2,900mm to just under 3,300mm in order to cover the tracks, and all that additional steel work has increased the weight from just over 24 tonnes to around 30 tonnes.
Regular operator and foreman of this particular road building crew, Anton Glamazina, is mightily impressed with his new steed.
With a civil road construction background, Anton was originally lured to Douglas Logging eight years ago to help Pete and Brad form the company’s first roading crew.
“We began with a 316 when we first started up the crew, which was working with a D7 back then, but when we got the D8 it couldn’t really keep up, so we went with a 323F and that’s what this new machine replaced,” says Anton.
“It was Brad’s idea to put the high and wide on this because we do a lot of cutover work. We have to go where the rippers have been and cover all their tracks up after they’ve taken out the stumps and fix it all up.
“You’ve got to be high and wide, otherwise you won’t get through. The standard model is quite low and there’s not a lot of space between the top of the tracks and the body if you get something caught in them.”
For the roading and pad construction duties, the Douglas digger is fitted with a 2-metre wide bucket made by Doherty Couplers & Attachments of Tauranga. And it sports a ROBUR Chubb extending thumb that is well proven in this sort of work. There’s also a single ripper attachment if required.
Among the changes that have received Anton’s seal of approval is how all the daily checks, including access to the engine oil dipstick, are now moved lower to allow the operator to perform them easily from the ground.
Same with the AdBlue tank for the Tier 4 Final engine, which has been moved from high on the body down to a position next to the lower step, so the operator doesn’t have to climb onto the machine to top it up.
The new cab is roomier and features more glass than the one it has replaced, which is especially noticeable when you plonk yourself in the operator’s seat, which is heated and cooled if you go for the Premium pack (the seat in the Deluxe model is heated only).
The view is very good on most angles but there’s a nice piece of technology that helps the operator overcome the usual blind spot where the boom is situated. Caterpillar has positioned cameras on all sides to give the operator a genuine 360-degree view looking down on the machine. I’ve seen this feature in some high-end luxury cars, but it’s a first for an excavator and a very welcome one.
Anton says it’s very handy, although he adds: “The best for me are the camera out on the boom side and the rear camera – I don’t really need cameras all round, but it is a cool gadget, I guess.”
The cameras are worked from the new touch-screen, where all the functions for operating the Next Gen 323 are now housed.
Twist the rotating handle on the right side of the seat to turn the machine on, press the engine start button and you can scroll through all the keys on the screen to bring up various functions.
In here you'll also find the 2D Grade Assist functions that help the operator set up parameters for using the bucket. Using these functions,
the operator can create an ‘invisible barrier’ that prevents the bucket from getting too close to an object in the ground, to either side or even above (such as power lines). The operator can also use the automated boom, stick and bucket movements to deliver more accurate cuts with less effort by simply setting the depth and slope into the monitor and activating single-lever digging. It can also record the weight of each bucket load.
While those features are obviously designed for civil construction work, they do have applications in some forestry jobs.
Anton explains: “I tried the 2D parameters when I was in the quarry to calculate the weight of each bucket so we could work out what was going out in a day on the trucks.
“On another job I set the depth for digging in deadmen so we knew they were at the right depth and it’s the same all the way through.
“I can see it being useful for creating a difficult water table to follow a specific design. I’ve used it where I wanted to get a pad level – If you are doing a sheer line, you just set the depth to where you want to start and every time you move you set it to the last one where you were at – you have to re-set it every time you move the machine.
“The height restriction is useful if you are working under power lines, which I sometimes have to do.
“It took me a while to figure it out, but now I know how to do it, it is quite easy. Trouble is, you have to keep using it to remember.”
There’s even something called Lift Assist, to help avoid tipping the machine through visual and auditory alerts if the load is outside the excavator’s safe working limits.
There was no touch-screen on his previous machine, so Anton has had to feel his way around all the various functions to understand what it can do. Among them is the ability to easily change from a standard Cat pattern for the joystick controls to the pattern used by Hitachi and John Deere via the touch-screen.
With most Douglas machines using Hitachi pattern controls, it was something Anton had to get used to when he started work there because it wasn’t easy to change. Fortunately for our Iron Tester, Stan Barlow, it only takes a few seconds to swap now.
It’s also easier to make fine adjustments to the power settings of the Next Gen 323 through the touch-screen.
There are three mode choices, with Eco providing the most fuel saving, but least power, then a Power mode for heavy-duty work and finally, a new Smart mode that automatically adjusts engine and hydraulic power for the highest fuel efficiency, with less power for tasks such as swinging and more power for digging.
Anton says: “If I’m doing easy water tables and such like, I’ll just stick it in Economy and I tend to leave it. I’ve tried the Smart mode but I prefer to make the decisions myself.”
Using Eco much of the time has seen a dramatic drop in fuel consumption, says Anton, adding that his old machine would use up its 410-litre tank of fuel in around the same time as the new Cat consumes its smaller 345-litre tank. Cat confirms the improvement, saying the new machine is 20% better on fuel than its predecessor.
“It’s far more fuel efficient. Stoked at how good it is,” he adds.
“And the power is good. It’s fast, very fast. Especially compared to a 313F that we’ve got – when I hop on that it feels like I’m driving a 40-tonne digger. This feels like a little 2-tonner, it’s that fast.
“I did have a bit of trouble getting used to the fine blading because it is so fast – to be smooth, especially when you are starting out, you get that jumping and you’ve got to really concentrate to get it nice and smooth.
“So I’ve turned it down – very easy to adjust the settings – and I’m able to be a lot smoother.”
NZ Logger has experienced the Cat ACERT C7.1 six-cylinder engine that powers the Next Gen 323 before, as it runs in the Cat 538 forestry loader that we Iron Tested back in 2017.
On paper, there doesn’t appear to be much different between this power plant and the one under the bonnet of the old 323F. They are both Tier 4 Final engines, but in the new machine it delivers a slightly higher peak output of 122kW (164hp), yet that doesn’t really account for the different in fuel consumption and performance.
Caterpillar explains that it is the precise combination of lower engine speed and a large hydraulic pump governed by the new suite of
technologies that help the Next Gen 323 deliver top performance while burning less fuel. Electronics are a wonderful thing, aren’t they?
Similarly, Cat says it has reduced maintenance costs by 15% through things like increasing the life of the hydraulic return filter by 50% to 3,000 hours and doubling the service life of the air filters to 1,000 hours. The three fuel system filters now have a 500-hour service interval.
The design engineers have also reduced the amount of hydraulic lines in the system, resulting in 20% less oil required, which will deliver more ongoing savings to owners.
We’re keen to see all these improvements put to work and today we’ve travelled to a woodlot just inland from the Northland coastal settlement of Waipu Cove, where the Douglas roading crew has been tidying up roads into the job and making sure all the water tables and drainage are correct whilst this site awaits the return of a harvesting team when the price of export logs
returns to higher levels.
There had been a lot of rainfall in the weeks preceding our visit and the ground conditions have really tested the abilities of the new Cat.
Anton points up the hill behind us to the top of the track and tells us he has some work to complete at the far end before this machine joins the rest of his roading crew at the next job and we’re invited to help out.
Due to the wet weather, the track is very sticky, but the combination of the single grousers and plenty of power in the drive motors ensures the Next Gen 323 lives up to the promise of good walk speed, which has an impressive maximum of 5.7km/h in rabbit.
At the far end of the track, where Anton is going to create a small yarder landing, he demonstrates some of the finer movements as he levels the ground and creates a batter on the edge to prevent water and debris flowing down the slope. It looks very smooth indeed.
Demo over, he instructs Stan on how to set up the functions on the touch-screen and shows him the controls for the bucket movements.
Anton mentions that the controls for rotating and tilting the bucket have changed slightly compared to his previous machine.
“The buttons are around the other way now,” he says. “They are on each stick and they used to go from side-to-side but now they’ve made them up-and-down. That took a little bit of getting used to.”
Stan takes it all in and then proceeds to finish the batter on the edge of the landing before returning to levelling the ground.
There are a number of boom and arm options available for this machine, but the Douglas 323 is fitted with the standard 5.7-metre boom and 2.9-metre arm. With the bucket stretched out, the operator is provided with a maximum blade reach of 9.86 metres. Anton says it doesn’t need to be any longer for the work his crew does.
There are a few big stumps in the way of proceedings, along with slash and rocks, and Stan needs to use the thumb to pick them up and cast them out of the way.
Anton says: “I use the thumb a lot, especially when we are carting stumps away. Also, I might have to shift a whole lot of logs that might be left on a pad that we have to do something with, and even load a stems truck with it.
“Or laying down corduroy to build the pad in a wet area where we have to unload a truck. Or grab rocks to do slips. Gotta have a thumb of some sort for this work.”
It does the job admirably and even with a heavy load in the bucket, there don’t appear to be any stability issues when Stan extends the boom and arm to drop another big root at the bushline, thanks to the 5.4-tonne counterweight on the rear.
The Douglas team are justifiably proud of the performance of the Next Gen Cat 323. With more than 1,100 hours on the clock, it hasn’t missed a beat since it went to work and it’s costing them much less to run.
I don’t think Pete and Brad will be looking very far when their second roading crew needs a replacement for their 323F in the future.
NZL