Brush Rake for excavator?

I'm thinking about buying a brush rake for my ex120 or having one built. Right now I'm leaning towards having one built by a local shop that can weld heavier hardened metal. 90% of my work seems like is land clearing and I thought this would be a nice tool to have on hand. I was wondering if any of you guys have one, and what your thoughts are on having one around. Photos would be cool too, if you have them.

I was thinking along the same lines myself just the other day. I currently run pin on buckets on proposed machine and the only way I can see a brush rake working for me is to go to a quick hitch system. I would rather build one myself or have one built locally. We have a chain on rake at work for a 50 size mini but its not missing any paint yet.

One thing is to be very, very careful if you make it much wider than a normal digging bucket for that hoe. With a wide rake or even a ditch cleaning bucket, if you catch something w/ the edge you can ruin a stick before you know anything happened.

I work at a U.S. Equipment Attachment Manufacturer that will remain nameless as Forums do not and should not be commercials. For Land Clearing applications as in most cases the right tool for the job makes your day a lot easier.
To the point; we see the trend for land clearing with Excavators to certainly equip the machine with a coupler. The icing on the cake is to also equip the machine with a Thumb. The Thumb should be designed to stay on the machine when you uncouple (We are careful not to say “drop”) an attachment. The coupler then allows you to swap from the bucket for digging out a rock or stump to then change to the rake for sorting debris from the soil for loading trucks or grinders. The Combination of the Thumb and the Rake actually provides a “grapple” type attachment for in most cases less $$ than buying a grapple.
We see in the States a real variation in regions and their preferences on the types of thumbs and if contractors even use thumbs. Any type of thumb is better than no thumb and it is almost humorous to watch operators do a balancing act with their machine to load material with no thumb when they could have loaded the same in seconds if they could get a grip on their material. If the bulk of your work is above ground and involves material other than dirt consider the Bucket, Coupler, Thumb, Rake combination. No the arrangement is not cheap but neither is your time and fuel.
Hint, Buy your combination attachment package from the same manufacturer so all products fit each other and there is one source of responsibility if there is any issues.
Have a great day all and try not to break anything.

I'm extremely grateful that my 120 came with a thumb and a quick coupler. As I recall its a Hendrix.

After over a decade of frustration I made a grab and a rake for my little 1.8 tonne excavator. All I can say is it's heaven when they are needed. Only problem for me is I generally do hourly hire for customers and none of them bat an eyelid when I load a bin with concrete in a quarter of the time. They just don't understand I've saved them time and money. Hope your situation is different.

I was quite surprised at the tyne spacing, and I could have even done with a bit more width. Smaller roots are like fibreglass strands and bind the soil together so maybe get some input on what spacing are on guys rakes that do similar work to you.

I paid $70 for the plate for the tynes. It's boilerplate which is a significant jump in strength above grade 350 steel. Figured I don't need the wear resistance for my little toy and the amount of use the rake gets. I'll just hardface the front edge and points if it's ever an issue. The rest of the steel is what I had lying around my workshop so I've got a cheap rake.



Keith

Looks good!! How wide are your tines right now anyways?

Set your spacing to bucket teeth so the thumb matches up. For a 120 i'd want something in the 40-50" range.

pp13bnos said:

Looks good!! How wide are your tines right now anyways?

Click to expand...

100 mm between tyne. Another guy I talked to on this forum has 2 rakes, one has 150 mm spacings for the "rough" sorting and the other one has 75 mm spacings.

Making the toys look good has a lot to do with 3D cad. I can adjust the curves on the tynes, make the nice curvy ears (otherwise totally pointless LOL), then "assemble" it all in the cad program and even rotate the finished item in 3D "space". I built a cnc plasma cutting table to chop all the bits out, it still puts a grin on my face when it cuts the parts out.

A concreter I work for has just asked me to make a "clip-on" rake for his seiving bucket (why can't life be simple). He only wants tynes which are maybe twice as long as bucket teeth, to help him separate the concrete from the dirt. He's got a 5 tonne machine.

Keith.

Watch ritchie brothers, you should be able to find a new/or used one in good shape for a 120 size machine for less than half of what a fab shop is going to charge you.

I see them come up all the time.

I'm looking to buy a brush rake for my cat 308, are JMA a good choice? what kind of steel do they use in the manufacture. Most of the rake I'm looking at say what type steel they are made of JMA say high quality steel

I have this set up for a TB175 (8 ton) It is mostly made from grader cutting edge. The back channel iron is for jump turns. I use it for loading / unloading logs and cleaning up junk / slash piles in conjunction with a thumb. Way better than using a bucket; lighter and able to screen out the dirt.