50 Years of MÜLLER Driving and Extracting Equipment
As a leading manufacturer of driving and drilling equipment, ThyssenKrupp GfT Tiefbautechnik is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the development and production of MÜLLER driving and xtracting equipment.
The system was not at first particularly successful, as the injection piles of the day were difficult to place by vibration. Initially, vibration thus remained a sideline activity. The few vibrators in operation were built by a variety of companies under license.
The launch of hydraulic driving changed fortunes at the end of the Sixties. With the improvement in electric drive technology and the introduction of a hydraulic drive on the MS-12 vibrator in 1967, business picked up noticeably. Production was brought back to the company in 1970 and the first hydraulic vibrators with an adjustable first moment of area were developed. With modifications, these are still in successful use today in the HHF series. The revival of business was also significantly boosted when the services of Krupp Stahlhandel as a marketing partner were obtained in 1972. MÜLLER driving and extracting equipment was now marketed throughout Germany.
Work on the development and construction of excavator-mounted vibrators started in the mid- Seventies. In 1989, the biggestever single vibrator the MS-200 HHF was built with a power requirement of 1100 kw. The Nineties were marked by the launch of the variable vibration equipment of the MS-16 HFV to MS-48 HFV. At the same time, a new generation of drive units was developed with programmable logic controls. This was followed by the introduction of variable excavator-mounted vibrators in 1998. Since 2004, the biggest variable vibrator the MS-62 HFV has been in use, among other things in the construction of the Strelasund bridge to the island of Rügen.