Engineering the rotating loader forks was just as much an exercise was in cost savings as it was in engineering. The whole idea was to create a rotator based on a standard mini excavator slewing ring (5 ton) and a couple of “mostly” off the the shelf hydraulic cylinders.

Finding slewing rings locally was relatively easy, a few phone calls to some local resellers and we had a stack of mini excavator slewing rings standing by.

The entire assembly was modelled in SolidWorks CAD software. FEA analysis was also conducted to ensure that the frame would stand up to repeated cycling of both the forks and rotator. The hydraulic cylinders were trunnion mounted for maximum rotation in a tight space.