Gomaco's new G22

The last year or so has seen Gomaco rollout its new G22 controller across its range. Although its early days - the unit was first seen at last April's Bauma exhibition, and US customers saw it for the first time this year at ConExpo and World of Concrete - the company says it has been universally well-received.

Speaking to iC at the company's headquarters in Ida Grove, Iowa, Kevin Klein, vice president for Research & Development said, "The feedback we've had has been good. We haven't hit that many of our customers with it yet, because the international launch was only last year at Bauma, but anybody that has got their hands on it have been very complementary.

"The major advantage is the intuitive nature of the display. It's easy for operators to navigate around, rather than page through screen after screen, and there are some graphical capabilities that make it easier to understand. Previously we had to abbreviate fault codes and so on, but now we can give full text descriptions, and tells people how to resolve issues.

"Another big feature is the dual language facility, both overseas and in the US, where we have a big slice of the construction workforce that don't speak English."

"There are still some users out there who are not used to using electronic controls. But the resistance has really dropped off, and at the same time there are expectations among mechanics that controllers will be better and offer more help in troubleshooting and so on."

"We're just scratching the surface of what this can do. We hope to include more troubleshooting screens and maintenance information in the system in the future. That would save the operator the trouble of looking things up in the manual. We should be able to put things like schematics on there in the future."