Hymac
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The Hymac or HY-MAC Company was established to market the American designed Hy-Hoe excavator in the UK in 1960. The company has had various owners during its life due to recessions in the 70 and 80's before ceasing production in the early 1990's.
The Companies Name has been used in several variations over the years in its own marketing material and on the machines. Hymac, HY-MAC, HYMAC being the most common.
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[edit] History
The companies history like many other UK manufacturing firms has been complicated by the ups and downs of the economy and construction industry. This has resulted in many take overs and mergers with the brand being the 'public' face of the company and various corporate entities having control and marketing a variety of machines as HY-MAC, HYMAC and Hymac from the 1960's on. Some of these machines were designed and built by them and others were 'badge engineered' items, as is the case with a lot of Brands today like Massey Ferguson who are now a Brand and a subsidiary with some items built by other companies.
[edit] The beginning
The company was born out of Steelfab of Cardiff in Wales (established 1946) and starts manufacturing in South Wales, UK.[citation (source) needed]
The Hymac company was set up in 1960 and started to import the American designed and built Hy-Hoe excavators in kit form. When Hy-Hoe ceased manufacture in 1962 Hymac then took on the manufacturing rights, and stared manufacturing machines in South Wales, UK.
The development of the Hymac 580 and the revised mark II version the 580B, was recognised by a Design Council award in 1967.[1]
[edit] 1972-1980 Era
The Hymac company was taken over in 1972 by the Powell Duffryn company of Wales. Powell Duffryn were a mini engineering conglomerate at the time with interests from Coal to Transport and Shipping. The company having a long history in coal and shipping, which still continues today.
During the Powell Duffryn era they built a JCB 3C type Backhoe Loader during the 1970's that had a Heavy duty loader more like a loading shovel with arms made solid steel 1½ thick rather than box beams. Some versions having Hy reach arms. These Huge machines had a flat deck cab, with good visibility from the raised position of the driver. This was based on the Whitlock 860 machine, Hymac having taken over Whitlock the (one of several claimed inventors of the Backhoe Loader), in 1972.[2]
They also built a lot of wheeled 360 machines for scrap handling, fitted with 5 tine grabs or magnets, often with raised cabs. Till scrap yards started being cleaned up in the last few years, you would mainly see a Hymac or Atlas machine, or an old 22 RB crane in most yards. Now Terex built Fuchs and German Liebherr machines are Predominant.
During the Powell Duffryn ownership the company was the Demag distributor for the UK. An advert from that period claims 7,500 Hymac 580 machines sold.[3]
In the late 1980 a revised line of excavators with a new yellow colour scheme was launched. But too late to save them from the Japanese and other far eastern imports and the new JCB (Japanese designed) line up.
They generally had Ford engines, but some were fitted with Perkins units. The 360 excavators were available with a variety of Track and Boom / dipper combinations.
The Hymac operation was sold to the German IBH Group in about 1980.
In 1978 Hymac & Priestman were involved in a court case about the use of the designation '580' on priestman machines.[4] The model 580 being Hymacs most popular model.
[edit] 1980-1984
The IBH group was a German investment company that owned numerous engineering firms. IBH also owned the German firm Hanomag, But they then went bust in 1983 , when the bank that backed them got into difficulties. Hanomag were linked with Massey Ferguson for a period, and built some of their construction plant models. Hanomag was partially taken over by Komatsu in 1989, with them becoming a 100% owned subsidiary of the Japanese firm in 2002. IBH also owned Euclid after it was divested by General Motors but after IBH's collapse it reverted to GM till it was sold off and became Terex.
By the early 80's the Hymac excavator range consisted of four basic models; crawler 580D/DS, the crawler 450E/ELC and its wheeled version W450E+W350D, the crawler 201LC and its wheeled version W201 which were introduced in 1983 these were designed jointly by Hymac & Hanomag, prior to the IBH collapse in 1983.[5]
[edit] 1984-1991
In 1984 Hymac was bought from the receivers by Northern Engineering Industries (NEI).[6] Production of some Hymac models restarted near Wolverhampton. Then in 1987 the BM Group bought the company and renamed it Hymac Group Ltd. Then in 1988 ownership changed again after Gordon Brown (entrepreneur not British politician) (owner of BM group) formed "Brown Engineering (Hymac) Ltd". They then to cut costs and offer more modern machines sold badged Italian built machines from FAI Group. These were the W121 a 13ton machine, 211 a 21ton class model, and the 251 a 25ton class machine.
[edit] 1991-1993
Following the collapse of the Brown Group in 1991, Irish plant dealer John Kennedy then introduced new models; the Synchron 1301 & 1501 in 1992 which featured Linde's Synchron load sensing hydraulic systems. But production finally ceased in 1993.
The very last machine ever built by Hymac was an model 181B 18t a sad end to yet another great British Engineering company.[citation (source) needed]
[edit] Parts and Support
[edit] The new Hymac
HY-MAC has now come back to the machinery world designing and building a new range of machinery in 2009.Cite error: Closing </ref> missing for <ref> tag
- Hymac 380 a 7 ton class 360 excavator. fitted with a Ford 4-cylinder engine. (only 15 were made).
- Hymac 450E - 1980
- Hymac 450ELC - 1980 Long carriage version
- Hymac W350D - 1980s Wheeled excavator
- Hymac W450E - 1980s Wheeled excavator
- Hymac 480 series tracked Excavator (only slewed 270 deg by a pair of rams and a chain drive round a pinion gear).
- 480 Excavator - 1962-1966 312 of these were manufactured
- 480 Tracked Crane - 196? (270deg slew) One of the surviving Examples is now owned by J.C. Balls & Sons and is exhibited in their collection of vintage machinery. It was part of the "Lighthouse Club" display at SED in 2009.[7]
- Hymac 580 series - Tracked 360 Excavator, Built from 1964-87 in various versions (about 10,000 built)
- Hymac 590 series
- 590C
- 590CT
- 596
- Hymac 690
- Hymac 800 series
- 880
- 880C
- 890
- 890CT
- Hymac 1080 - 1966 fitted with a 165 hp Rolls Royce C4 TFL engine.
- Hymac 1290 - 1970s 33ton (largest model built)
- Hymac 1301 Synchron - 1993
- Hymac 121 - 1990s New Hymac 360 Excavator line
- Hymac 141C - 1990s New Hymac 360 Excavator line
- Material Handlers
- Mobile cranes
- Whitlock built a 7 Ton all hydraulic mobile crane with a 24ft-78ft jib between 1965 and 67. Twenty were built on the Dodge D309 (LAD cab) chassis. The 1965 List price was £6,985.[8]
- Forklifts
- Hymac Overlander 45 a 2-wd Rough terrain forklift (RTF).[9]
- Hymac Mini Excavator - A Badge engineering job - very few sold.
- Australia
- It is claimed a few 580 machines were built under licence by the Australian distributor.[10][citation (source) needed]
[edit] Preserved machines
- The collection of J.C. Balls & Sons has an unusual Hymac 480 crane (Photo above)
- A one owner Hymac 380 is in preservation now in Scotland, after working for one firm for 40 years. Only a few hundred of these were built from the imported US manufactured kits.[11]
- A few are with collector in Scandinavia were they were a popular machine.
- A long reach model was featured in Classic Plant & Machinery Magazine last year.
[edit] See also
- Collector related pages
[edit] References
- ↑ VADS web site - Reprint of 1967 Design council publication on hymac 580B development
- ↑ CP&M VV6-5 p50
- ↑ Copy of Hymac advert on CMN site
- ↑ Oxford Journal - extract report on court case
- ↑ http://www.contractjournal.com/blogs/digger-blog/2008/09/hymac_memories.html
- ↑ NY Times article on sale
- ↑ Classic Plant & Machinery Magazine, Vol 6, Issue 1
- ↑ Classic machinery Network Posted by XS650 (Craig)
- ↑ photo of overlander
- ↑ www.classicmachinerynetwork.net post in Hymac section
- ↑ CP&M vol1 no. 4
[edit] External links
- Official Hymac Parts supplier.
- Article on Hymac design innovation from Design Journal 1967
- New web site WWW.HY-MAC.COM for The 'New' HY-MAC company.
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