I had a discussion the other day with a fellow co-worker about the meanings of the the numbers and letters in the machines "name". Can someone help us figure this all out, we got the jist of it but I'm sure we are missing something. Essentially the last two numbers in Cat hoes basically are the weight in metric tons, the 3 is the family, and the letter would be the series. L would mean long undercarriage, N is narrow, dozers are kind of as follows, XW, XL, XR, LGP, and blah blah blah. On the dozers it's a mixed bag, 3's were B,C,G, and K, 4's were a bunch all there own, as were the 5's, 6's are all over too. Is there a rhyme or reason to the letters or is it just a sequential series and if it is, why do they skip some letters, such as the 6H evolving into the 6R the to the T, ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ, where's the 6S? Basically he tried telling me the R stood for rock cuz they were a "rock" dozer and it went downhill from there.
You have it right afaik. My 320L is a 3 series excavator and weighs approximately 20 metric "tonnes". On dozers, LGP is "low ground pressure" which means wider track frame spacing and wider pads, etc. Most single letters following equipment names indicate newer models, don't know why they skip some. Must be the marketing department thinks some letters don't sound so hot, what's wrong with an F model? If R stands for a "rock" dozer how did we get along all these years without one?
Anybody with some insight to this?
The R in D6R is just the series, doesn't stand for rock. Why Cat skips some letters and not others I think is just a marketing thing... D8t sounds better than D8S? I have heard that the D stands for diesel, going waaay back to the start of the track type tractors and running with diesel engines. M318d ... the M stands for Mobile or Wheeled if you like. 3 is the family of excavators and 18 is the weight class... D is the series and again, who knows the thought process behind it. (it should be noted that the 200 family did not get placed by weight... a 235 was in the same class as a 345)