Sean further increased efficiency with his new Liebherr & engcon tiltrotator

Sean Coghlan owns & operates his company Shamrock Earthworks Ltd, in Calgary, Alberta. Over the years, he has become a highly respected entrepreneur specializing in large-scale retaining walls made of natural stone on high end landscape projects, and also grading and general excavation work.

– “I am driven by completing large and complicated projects that give my customers something useful but also beautiful that they can enjoy for years to come,” says Sean.
Sean describes how engcon’s tiltrotators facilitate his work building complicated walls.

– “Previously I was building using a bucket and a thumb and I would always have to continuously move the machine around to get in a perpendicular position to the wall I was building. With engcon's tiltrotator, it does not matter what position the machine is in; now I can easily rotate and tilt the stones into position. You could say that the tiltrotator is the excavator's wrist," says Sean.

He goes on to talk about how he starts the construction of the wall by digging out and preparing the base for the stones, then disconnects the bucket and thanks to the EC-Oil automatic quick hitch system, he can connect engcon's hydraulic compactor without leaving the cab. He then compacts the base material and then he simply disconnects the compactor to then connect the engcon stone & sorting grapple with which he grabs and lifts the stones into the wall.

– “Not having to jump in and out of the cab to connect hoses saves both wear and tear on the body and an incredible amount of time" Sean continues.

In addition to being super easy to switch between different tools under the tiltrotator, it is just as easy to remove the tiltrotator itself from the excavator stick.

– If it is the case that I need extra breakout power to get through the frost with the ripper, or if I am just going to move large volumes of materials (loading trucks) then thanks to EC-Oil I can easily disconnect the tiltrotator and connect the ripper or bucket directly to the machine hitch. In this way, I increase the breakout force and save weight as I do not need the tiltrotator for those tasks.

Sean disconnects the stone & sorting grapple and shows us how engcon has developed the tiltrotator quick hitch. He points into the underside of the quick hitch and tells us that it is now completely hose-less and that the hoses have now been replaced by blocks that are bolted to each other.

– “A very big improvement as it was quite complicated to change or tighten the hoses inside the coupler earlier,” Sean says. Security has also been heightened since Sean stopped using his thumb.

– With a thumb, you need to activate the thumb at the same speed as you curl out the bucket, otherwise you risk losing what you grab. With engcon's stone & sort grapple, you can keep the load safe no matter how you run the other functions on the excavator.

Sean shows another clever feature of the tiltrotator. The removable grab cassette that can be easily connected or disconnected depending on whether he needs it in the job he is doing.

When it comes to driver comfort, it has also improved since Sean started operating with engcon. The advantages of connecting hydraulic tools without leaving the cab have been mentioned already and now we are going to take a step into the office (cab)

– In addition to the machines themselves becoming quieter and the cabs getting better sound insulation, engcon’s joysticks have lifted comfort to a new level. “They are ergonomic and comfortable to grip and it is also easy to adapt all functions to suit me,” says Sean.

When we come to the question of his ongoing experiences with the Engcon organization and their service, Sean does not hesitate.

– I felt from the first day at Conexpo that they were genuinely interested in my business and how they could help me. Since I bought my first tiltrotator, they've always been there for me 100% even if it's just little things that I have needed.

In addition to the automatic quick hitch system EC-Oil, the tiltrotator and stone & sorting grapple, Sean has pallet forks that he uses to unload stones that come on pallets by truck.

– “In the past, I had to bring my skidsteer with forks to unload the trucks, now I do it with the excavator. In addition, it doesn’t matter if the excavator is sitting on a different angle than the truck, thanks to the tiltrotator I can tilt and rotate the forks to line up with the pallet,” Sean says.

Just as we are about to finish today's visit, a truck loaded with large stones arrives for further construction of the retaining wall for a newly built house. Sean manoeuvres his Liebherr with the pallet forks and it doesn't take long for him to unload all the pallets. Fast, efficient and easy – just as Sean told us during our visit.