Hardox® 500 Tuf steel in buckets - makes buckets tough on wear

With Hardox^® 500 Tuf, your buckets get high productivity and long-lasting durability in combination with high strength and low weight. By leveraging the benefits of Hardox^® 500 Tuf, you can reduce bucket weight while getting a larger bucket with higher loading capacity – meaning more work done in less time. This goes for all kinds of buckets, whether used in quarries or mines, in road construction, as wheel or track excavators, on front or backhoe loaders, or in surface or underground mining operations.

*Based on real-life data: The examples of savings by upgrading to Hardox^® 500 Tuf are based on a 4 m3 excavator bucket consuming a minimum of 40 l/h and running approximately 2.000 h/ year. The lighter bucket will reduce the fuel consumption by 3% p.a. at a minimum. Increased load capacity and other benefits in operation and production are the result of optimizing the material thicknesses in the bucket, and reducing the wear protection of the bucket.

Hardox^® 500 Tuf wear steel allows for a smarter approach to loader and excavator bucket design. By manufacturing the entire body in wear-resistant Hardox^® 500 Tuf, you can reduce the amount of liners and other wear packages, which add a lot of weight and make production more complicated. Fewer parts need to be manufactured. Less welding saves time and costs. The bucket becomes lighter and still has outstanding structural integrity.

The hardness of Hardox^® 500 Tuf is more than 10% higher compared to Hardox^® 450. And since wear resistance isn’t a linear phenomenon, the increase in hardness can give an increase in wear life as high as 50% – of course depending on the abrasive material and the operating conditions. If you are looking for a longer lasting bucket or other attachment, look no further than Hardox^® 500 Tuf.

Hardox^® 500 Tuf is hard and tough enough to function as a structural steel. The steel has a guaranteed hardness interval of 475-505 HBW for high wear resistance in the most challenging abrasive applications, and a typical yield strength of 1250- 1400 MPa. Thanks to its high toughness, with a guaranteed impact energy of 27 J at -20°C (20 ft-lb at -4°F) and a typical value of 45 J at -40°C (33 ft-lb at -40°F), it performs well in every climate, and even better for equipment operating in freezing conditions.