just bought an excavator. I have a few bucket questions

It does not matter the width of the bucket it is the capacity. There is a sewer contractor in my area that puts a 12" wide bucket on his Cat 385B. digger

danhoe said:

It does not matter the width of the bucket it is the capacity. There is a sewer contractor in my area that puts a 12" wide bucket on his Cat 385B. digger

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I agree with you, but I would still like to see a pic of a 385 with a 12 inch bucket. The bucket ears must stick out....what 1 foot on each side??:tong

zxa said:

on a 300 size....the best bucket with teeth is definitivly a 54 inchs!! on my 225 i"ve a 42 inchs but could fit a 48 inchs too...

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You cannot say "best bucket".
If you are digging a 2 mile trench that only needs to be 2 feet wide, well then you will not be very efficient with a 42 or 48 huh?

There is, however, a best bucket for every application.

Just a quick question about the Geith setup.


Stock said earlier that "it would appear to have a Geith pin grabber type hitch which should make it easier to locate a bucket"

so if the pins on my bucket measure say, 3" in diameter, will I have the flexibility to use a bucket with 4" diameter pins? How about slightly different ear widths? Or am I limited to buckets for the Doosan 300 Solar LC V? Looking at some photos I took, it almost looks like the pins on my current bucket are smaller diameter than the ones on the end of the stick. Is the Geith that flexible?

I found a couple buckets laying around that I could pick up for next to nothing, but after measuring the pin diameters and centers, etc, they are slightly off, one way or another.

Here's one of the buckets I found. It appears to be for a kobelco machine and is in nice condition. My local scrap yard has it in a corner and said it's useless to him.

Here's some pics of my Doosan now that we've moved her to her new home.

I used it yesterday to air up a 29.5-29 that was being stubborn around the o-ring. This is a neat machine. Just pretty complicating to operate for someone that's never done it before. I checked out an (out of work) 68 year old operator the other day and he dug a very deep hole in around 3 minutes without really ever having operated anything other than Cat machines. He loved this machine BTW and starts this morning at 8am.

Glad to see im not the only one that buffs my machines lol.

Nice Doosan Serv. Nice work on the bucket man.

special tool said:

You cannot say "best bucket".
If you are digging a 2 mile trench that only needs to be 2 feet wide, well then you will not be very efficient with a 42 or 48 huh?

There is, however, a best bucket for every application.

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and this what i meant.....every general application... have a nice looking machine serv.....these doosan are very fuel efficient by the way...

Bellboy said:

Nice Doosan Serv. Nice work on the bucket man.

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Thanks man. I've been searching for the right machine for over 6 months now and looked at what seems like over 100 machines from old and busted to nice and fresh ones.

zxa said:

and this what i meant.....every general application... have a nice looking machine serv.....these doosan are very fuel efficient by the way...

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That's good to hear. My local scrap yard had every brand imaginable running out there until they ran a daewoo. Now they won't buy anything else but daewoo or doosan. They swear by (next to zero) downtime and have never had to replace a pump like they had to on most of the other brands. In fact, they just bought a used 2005 doosan 420 about a week ago.

JDMGrading said:

Glad to see im not the only one that buffs my machines lol.

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Buffing sure beats having to paint the machine. Well, we didn't get around to polishing the boom and stick since the machine had to go to work today. We'll get to it next time around. :drinkup




We top loaded my scraper about 30 times today in ~4 hours. And that's with the operator idling the excavator most of the time wating for the scraper to go dump. When loading, he was scooping 2 yards at a time with around 11 second cycle times at around 12 scoops per load. The machine is already well on it's way to paying for itself. I was very happy with the work that got done on its first day. The operator commented on how must faster and smoother this machine was than the cats he has always run. No offense to the Cat purists out there!!! :tong

Serv said:

Just a quick question about the Geith setup.

it would appear to have a Geith pin grabber type hitch which should make it easier to locate a bucket

so if the pins on my bucket measure say, 3" in diameter, will I have the flexibility to use a bucket with 4" diameter pins? How about slightly different ear widths? Or am I limited to buckets for the Doosan 300 Solar LC V? ?

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If you look at these two different hitches

This Miller has a back plate that goes behind the rear pin and the locking ram pushes against it.
As a result there is a small amount that the bucket pin centre to centre can vary because the hitch will not physically fit over the pins if too far apart.


This Geith (that Stock thinks might be like yours) has no back plate so the pins can be further apart. Provided of course that they are still within reach of the ram to exert pressure on it.
This generation 2 hitch has a gate mechanism to lock on the front pin.
With both these hitches the pin has to fit in the front lug and this will govern your bucket selection.
Generally 13t machine 65mm pins, 20t machine 80mm pin, 30t probably 100mm (4") pin. Just to add confusion these hitches take 60mm pins


Find the pin diameter of your machine and stick to that. Then measure the WIDTH of your hitch, this is the MINIMUM width required on any bucket you find, a bucket a bit wider between the webs will be ok. Now find out the minimum pin centre to centre by havining the hitch as in the picture and measure from the back of the front pin recese to the tip of the back plate add 1/2" for clearance.
Imagine that when you touch the hitch onto the front pin and crowd the hitch the rear lug has to miss the rear pin. MINIMUM pin centres.
To find the MAXIMUM pin centres, place hitch in locked position and measure from the back of the front lug to the INSIDE of the rear plate + 3/4 pin diameter.

Bear in mind that any bucket can have the lugs cut off and rewelded to make it fit.

Any bucket you try, make sure you view it critically and test it vigourously in a SAFE manner to ensure it fits SAFELY.
IF you are not capable or are unsure, find somebody who can check it for you.

on edit, a perfect bucket with pins too big could have the pins machined down to the correct size in the area between the webs so as to fit the hitch, leaving the pins original dimensions where they fit in the bucket lugs.

What tractor is that that your loading? Very good looking machine.

There is a sewer contractor in my area that puts a 12" wide bucket on his Cat 385B. digger

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that wouldnt happen to be Stante Excavating would it Dan. I know Mario Stante and they have alot of buckets for the 385'S. Who has underground work here in Michigan, Detroit area?

Good day Sir
Calculating bucket volume is not so difficult, however ours only use the metric system EEC 26 degrees heap opposed to the 45 degree heap used by NAFTA all you have to do is remember 765Lts = a cubic yard. If you would like a spread sheet which automates the process please drop me an email at bucket sense@gmail.com
Kind regards
Uffex

Good day Sir
I will try to answer your question in two parts 1/ the excavators capacity to handle a specific bucket the criteria is in my experience that of the tipping point at full reach across carriage. This is a combination of bucket weight - material weight - any additional attachment (ie:Quick coupler). Fill the bucket to capacity put the stick at full reach and swing to the side keeping the bucket a couple of feet from the ground, if it tips the bucket is to large. Note a large bucket can in some cases reduce production and impart high stress and fuel consumption. 2/ The width of a bucket is relative to the capacity calculation however it is not the only aspect, today my calculation uses CECE 26 degree heap since far more materials are likely to heap at this angle than that of S.A.E. 45 degree heap. If you would like detail of how to calculate bucket capacity drop an email to becketsense@gmail.com
Regards
Uffex

uffex said:

Good day Sir
I will try to answer your question in two parts 1/ the excavators capacity to handle a specific bucket the criteria is in my experience that of the tipping point at full reach across carriage. This is a combination of bucket weight - material weight - any additional attachment (ie:Quick coupler). Fill the bucket to capacity put the stick at full reach and swing to the side keeping the bucket a couple of feet from the ground, if it tips the bucket is to large. Note a large bucket can in some cases reduce production and impart high stress and fuel consumption. 2/ The width of a bucket is relative to the capacity calculation however it is not the only aspect, today my calculation uses CECE 26 degree heap since far more materials are likely to heap at this angle than that of S.A.E. 45 degree heap. If you would like detail of how to calculate bucket capacity drop an email to becketsense@gmail.com
Regards
Uffex

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operator language please...

TrentNz said:

operator language please...

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If the machine gets tippy when you have a fully loaded bucket swung out fully at 90 degrees to the direction of the tracks, you're bucket is too big.
Also the old calculation used by the society of American engineers is no longer used in Europe who now operate under EU controls/dictatorship. So when your bucket is heaped the angle of the material on top is now 26 degrees instead of 45, this is also why all bananas sold in the EU must conform to certain angles. Lucky for us we have a whole state full of banana benders.

However be aware if you do this test make sure to drop the boom, the downward momentum will add to the tip but generally speaking the 'big' bucket for any multi bucket machine will tip it over if not used properly. Basically it's a matter of having a bucket wide enough an deep enough to shift dirt fast in the right conditions, instead of reducing capacity or width because it may tip the machine over in extreme circumstances.
Zero tail swing machines are worst for tipping but are designed for tight access work.

we have a zx160 that's about a year old. its a standard long tail machine and that thing is a bitch for being tippy. badly designed machine

As this thread was started in 2009 I assume that SERV has his answer by now, but I wanted to add one thought. Even in soft material a bigger bucket is not necessarily the most productive. Besides being off balance, too bid of bucket can cause slower cycle times are not necessarily offset by the increase of yardage in the larger bucket. There is usually a "sweet spot" that is most productive, and is usually slightly smaller than the max bucket size for a machine, at least in regard to mass excavating. If fine grading large areas is the goal then of course the width is the determining factor. And that folks is my two cents worth (which is proabably only worth a penny today)!