Teeth on a bucket

[Bill Eh]

I have a mini excavator that I bought new. It now has 60 hours on it, earned digging through heavy clay, shale and rock. The bucket is an 18 inch with 5 teeth. When the teeth were new they were flat/square. The two outside teeth now are worn round on the outside edge and as a result don't cut quite as well as when they were new/square. I have some tooth questions I hope someone can help me with:

1/ Is it normal to rotate teeth in some way to balance wear?

2/ When do you think it's time to replace a tooth or do will the bucket be good enough for digging as long as there is even worn down rounded teeth on it.

Thanks

[nobull1]

If a person was to keep on top of it you could rotate and wear them all the same. I have done this a couple of times and probably get a little longer wear this way. The thing is around here I can get new teeth and pins for about $13.00 each. So at that price I just replace them all when they start to round off. To me $65.00 every few hundred hours or so is insignificant. One thing that I hate is when you loose a tooth and have to look for a matching one. This is when it's nice to have a couple of half worn sets around for spares. The New Holland dealers should have replacement teeth at a good price so long as you have a standard size.

[CascadeScaper]

We have about 150 hours on our excavator and I'm thinking about replacing the teeth as well.

[badranman]

I'll second what Nobull1 said. I find we lose teeth once in awhile when we're doing rock walls. This may be due to the rocks pulling down the teeth instead of pushing them into the shank. Keep in mind these are Bobcat mini-x's with the roll pins. Usually we find the tooth and just put in a new pin. We keep some old teeth and pins in the machine at all times. The price for teeth and pins for the Bobcats is around $40.00so , like Nobull1 said, it's pretty cheap and not worth the effort and expense (a new pin) to rotate them, just replace when worn.

[Ford LT-9000]

I never heard of someone rotating teeth on a bucket if you are only getting 60 hours out a set of teeth you must be buying cheap ones. Even us guys here in B.C. that dig in hard rock conditions get more hours than that out of a set of teeth.

Your buckets should be hard surfaced with some Xs and Os using hard surfacing rod you may want to have the cheeks of your bucket beefed up if you are wearing out a set of teeth in 60 hours.

The one thing you have to be carefull about is if you wear the tooth shanks down you will end up sheering pins or breaking off teeth.

[xkvator]

...these are Bobcat mini-x's with the roll pins. Usually we find the tooth and just put in a new pin. We keep some old teeth and pins in the machine at all times. The price for teeth and pins for the Bobcats is around $40.00so , like Nobull1 said, it's pretty cheap and not worth the effort and expense (a new pin) to rotate them, just replace when worn.
i've bought roll pins from GRAINGER...cheaper than from BOBCAT...the last time i got them online, they were marked way down...they're about 1/4" longer...a quick hit with the grinder takes care of that.

[dayexco]

we run toothless buckets as much as we can here, rock typically is not a problem, before we install new teeth on a bucket, we run a couple of passes of hard surface rod across them, makes them last MUCH longer.

[Squizzy246B]

I assume by your post you are using chisel teeth.

We rip a lot of limestone and the associated capstone with our 12" & 24" tooth buckets. We use Wexell Tiger Teeth and whilst we have broken some, we are yet to wear one out after many hundreds of hours work. The machine has about 2800hrs showing. I think the tiger teeth give you more penetration.

[Bob Horrell]

I second the use of tiger teeth. I have them on my smallest bucket for rocky soil and caliche. Regular teeth just leave 2 inch wide trenches in the caliche while the tiger teeth fracture the caliche and give better penetration. They also seem to last much longer than regular teeth, especially given the fact that they are used in the worst soil conditions.

[mdigger]

are they pinned on or crimped on

[Country]

You realize you are replying to an almost 4 year old thread?....