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Non traditional excavator uses....
- Thread starter millercross3
- Start date
This one is what i like to call "A Diet Fork" :laugh https://www.youtube.com/tv?vq=medium#/watch?v=KJm-jYQonn8
KevinF
Well-Known Member
Haha good eye there.
TrentNz
Well-Known Member
we use ours to clean the pool....
for lifting other diggers.... (we lifted the little one from the top to where its sitting in the 3rd photo and loaded 44 gal drums with concrete with the little digger and emptied them in a truck at the top)
for lifting other diggers.... (we lifted the little one from the top to where its sitting in the 3rd photo and loaded 44 gal drums with concrete with the little digger and emptied them in a truck at the top)
johndeere123
Well-Known Member
I guess this is conventional work, just an unconventional machine.
millercross3
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Jan 11, 2013
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- 132
- Location
- North Dakota
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- Traditional Farm/Ranching...Trucking/Construction
Nice job "pool boy" err I mean Trent
Guess you gotta make the first scoop count. Sure does stir things up a bit. Darn neighbor kids makin' a duky in the pool.
Guess you gotta make the first scoop count. Sure does stir things up a bit. Darn neighbor kids makin' a duky in the pool.millercross3
Well-Known Member
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- Jan 11, 2013
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- 132
- Location
- North Dakota
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- Traditional Farm/Ranching...Trucking/Construction
Are those big swamp tracks propelled the same as a regular excavator or do they have some sort of torque amplifier to move the extra mass. What's the length of the tracks and what sort of trailer do you gotta use to move it. Niffy outfit. That thing could crawl some wicked snow drifts up here.
johndeere123
Well-Known Member
The tracks have a chain and sprocket going to the rear of the track frame. I think the tracks are 38' long and 21 feet outside to outside. It will float on water. To move it, one track per trailer and a lowboy for the remainder.
millercross3
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Jan 11, 2013
- Messages
- 132
- Location
- North Dakota
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- Traditional Farm/Ranching...Trucking/Construction
How much extra weight is it compared to a regular undercarriage? Crane lifting it off only, I assume? Spendy outfit to move around, unless company owns the crane also.
TrentNz
Well-Known Member
Nice job "pool boy" err I mean Trent
yeah accidentally put a hole in the bottom of the pool so i got mad and ripped 'er out :drinkup
Waindude
Member
Well I have one that I bet nobody can top.
A few years ago, a guy I used to contract to for hydraulic repairs called me on a Saturday and asked me what I was doing, he wanted to know if I knew anything about planes, I said yes that I was going for my pilots licence at the time.
I rolled down to his shop, he had an old EX400LC that he had picked up at a RIchie Bros action. He had also flown out to Edmonton on a hunt for a plane prop. What he found at a scrap dealer was a 3 bladed prop from a DC3.
He wanted to remove the stick from the EX400 and build a mounting frame for a couple of hydraulic motors and this prop. This fellow was smart, he had built an empire out of making compost. He had a huge operation in the city that took all of the green waste and composted it in special windrows that he had designed, he was making a fortune because the regional powers were paying him 50 bucks a ton to take the greenwaste, he would compost it for 3 months and screen it and sell it back to everyone at 20 bucks a yard. At the time he had 2 EX700's a WA800 with a custom 100 yard bucket and a bunch of dresser 500 machines to move the compost from the windrow to the screen plant. His compost piles used to get so hot that they would ignite inside. So you can imagine the steam that would come off these things when they took bucket loads off.
Generally he would put one of the EX700's on the top of the pile and feed dirt into the massive buckets on the wheel loaders when they came up, with all of the steam generated he wanted to blow it away as his machine operators had had a few accidents with hitting each other. Thats where the EX400 came in with the DC3 prop.
I mounted two char-lynn 10,000 hydraulic motors with drive belts to a common shaft, the prop was on the common shaft. We disconnected the bucket hydraulic lines and used that oil to power the hydraulic motors, a bungie would hold the control over to continously feed oil to the motors.
This thing would blow your hat off at 50 yards, craziest thing you ever saw, but it worked. I had to install ball valves to prevent the lift cylinders from creeping down because if this thing ever hit the ground when it was running the scrapnel would have killed people.
I used to have pictures but I cant find them, you used to be able to see this thing from google maps too, but I think they have moved it.
I used to call it the flying excavator. Wish I could find those pictures tho. You probably dont believe me, but its got be around Vancouver somewhere.
A few years ago, a guy I used to contract to for hydraulic repairs called me on a Saturday and asked me what I was doing, he wanted to know if I knew anything about planes, I said yes that I was going for my pilots licence at the time.
I rolled down to his shop, he had an old EX400LC that he had picked up at a RIchie Bros action. He had also flown out to Edmonton on a hunt for a plane prop. What he found at a scrap dealer was a 3 bladed prop from a DC3.
He wanted to remove the stick from the EX400 and build a mounting frame for a couple of hydraulic motors and this prop. This fellow was smart, he had built an empire out of making compost. He had a huge operation in the city that took all of the green waste and composted it in special windrows that he had designed, he was making a fortune because the regional powers were paying him 50 bucks a ton to take the greenwaste, he would compost it for 3 months and screen it and sell it back to everyone at 20 bucks a yard. At the time he had 2 EX700's a WA800 with a custom 100 yard bucket and a bunch of dresser 500 machines to move the compost from the windrow to the screen plant. His compost piles used to get so hot that they would ignite inside. So you can imagine the steam that would come off these things when they took bucket loads off.
Generally he would put one of the EX700's on the top of the pile and feed dirt into the massive buckets on the wheel loaders when they came up, with all of the steam generated he wanted to blow it away as his machine operators had had a few accidents with hitting each other. Thats where the EX400 came in with the DC3 prop.
I mounted two char-lynn 10,000 hydraulic motors with drive belts to a common shaft, the prop was on the common shaft. We disconnected the bucket hydraulic lines and used that oil to power the hydraulic motors, a bungie would hold the control over to continously feed oil to the motors.
This thing would blow your hat off at 50 yards, craziest thing you ever saw, but it worked. I had to install ball valves to prevent the lift cylinders from creeping down because if this thing ever hit the ground when it was running the scrapnel would have killed people.
I used to have pictures but I cant find them, you used to be able to see this thing from google maps too, but I think they have moved it.
I used to call it the flying excavator. Wish I could find those pictures tho. You probably dont believe me, but its got be around Vancouver somewhere.
spitzair
Senior Member
Not only do I believe you, I've seen your creation! It was at a huge compost and topsoil facility in Richmond! In fact there may even have been 2 of them... I didn't have a digital camera back then but I remember being very intrigued by it! The lady at the scale house said it blows massive amounts of air around and I believe it! Sure wish I had a camera back then! They had some very beautiful young ladies operating some 844 deere loaders with gigantic buckets too!
Shenandoah
Well-Known Member
Waindude
Member
Ya the owner had 4 daughters, no sons, from High School on those girls would be out working at the site, they could drive every piece of equipment there, from the WA800 to the EX700 excavators. The deal was, Dad would pay for school, but the girls had to work weekends at the site. Gotta give it to them all, that place stunk, it was hard dirty work, but those girls did it. I worked there for about 5 years contracting, when we finished building the new production line I could tell the owner was getting ready to sell so I came out to Alberta, he did sell the place, Al Gore was part of the group that bought it, because it kept so much material out of the landfill and they started drawing the methane off the compost and putting that back into grid.
As it was, the whole site sat on an old landfill, Lafarge had put pipes in the ground years earlier to draw out the methane and use it in thier concrete plant, when this guy took the place over, he started using that methane in his Cat 3406 Diesels that drove the huge fans that pulled air through the compost piles, cut his fuel by 80%. This guy was a farmer basically, but very very smart. Dennis Augustine is his name, still runs a few operations out there now, but not as big as the Richmond site.
As it was, the whole site sat on an old landfill, Lafarge had put pipes in the ground years earlier to draw out the methane and use it in thier concrete plant, when this guy took the place over, he started using that methane in his Cat 3406 Diesels that drove the huge fans that pulled air through the compost piles, cut his fuel by 80%. This guy was a farmer basically, but very very smart. Dennis Augustine is his name, still runs a few operations out there now, but not as big as the Richmond site.
millercross3
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- Location
- North Dakota
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Oh man, pics or even a video would be the cats pajamas! I bet some people would rubber neck when they saw that contraption. I would be one of them. Can't see a helevator just every day.