Bauma magazine article #1 – Then and now
Liebherr on your site – then and now
We have been at our customers' side for more than 70 years. This continuity and reliability is also reflected in our motto for this year's Bauma, "On your site". In this article, join us on a journey through our exhibition years from 1949 until today.
A journey through time over the Bauma years
Trend-setting prototype
Everything started back then with serial number 181001. In 1979, it was assigned to the prototype of Liebherr’s first duty cycle crawler crane.The operating weight of the excavator was 80 t and the dragline bucket could hold up to 3.5 m³ of material. In dragline operation, the boom had a maximum length of 30 m. This first model was in daily use for four decades. Over the next decades, the HS 870 was followed by a large number of construction machines from Nenzing. In 2020, 40 years after the first duty cycle crawler crane was built, Liebherr unveiled the new, state-of-the-art HS 8070.1 with an operating weight of 72 t.
Start of a success story
The first two Liebherr wheel loaders were built in the 1950s, but still had some “teething problems”at that time. By contrast, the third Liebherr wheel loader, which was developed and built from 1962, was robust and reliable. With a weight of approximately 10 t, the LSL 1500 had a 108 hp diesel engine and a bucket volume of 1.5 m³. In its day, this wheel loader was a stateof-the-art, technical milestone and was exhibited at Bauma 1963.
Aiming high
As we know, everything at Liebherr started with cranes. At Bauma 1969, Liebherr presented several successor models, including the then newly released 50 HC, the first representative of the still extremely successful HC series. A lot has happened since Bauma 1969. For example, fibre rope technology has found its way into Liebherr top-slewing cranes.
Heavyweight champions
The Liebherr R 991 was a 160-tonne excavator that was introduced in 1976, only two years after the production of Liebherr’s very first mining excavator, which had an operating weight of merely 66 t. The R 991 ran on two 6-cylinder diesel engines. The excavator’s bucket had a capacity of 4.50–5.50 m³ in backhoe bucket configuration. Decades later, Liebherr introduced the R 9200, a mining excavator with an operating weight of 205 t. It was first unveiled at Bauma 2016.
Mobile worldwide
In 1980, the LT 1200, the most powerful Liebherr telescopic crane at the time, came onto the market with a maximum lifting capacity of 200 t. In addition, it had a 55-metre telescopic boom and could achieve lifting heights of up to 92 m with a lattice jib. At the time, the LT road crane series was being converted into all-terrain LTM cranes, as LT cranes were able to operate on the road, but less well in construction site terrain – the turning radii were too large and the tyres too small. All this is now a thing of the past
The mixture makes the difference
A Betomix 30 in star silo design was exhibited on the Liebherr exhibition booth at Bauma 1969 on the Theresienwiese in Munich. It was showcased to the public for the first time as a novelty. The truck mixers of the first generation (HTM 601/701, recognizable by the angular feed hopper) were also presented to the world here for the first time, as production of the truck mixers began in 1967/68.
Everything runs smoothly
The Liebherr electric machine was presented at an exhibition for the first time in 1958. This special machine was used in dredgers and had an output of 140 kW.
Today’s electric motors from Liebherr require a significantly smaller installation space while maintaining the same power. Increases in performance and effectiveness have been achieved over the decades with more efficient materials and ever better manufacturing methods.
Read more Bauma magazine stories here.