Is there any benefit to learning the iso pattern?

I’ve ran(owned)backhoes for 30 years, rented excavators through the years and ran on backhoe pattern. Now that I own a excavator is there any long term benefit to the iso pattern? I’m thinking not, but the excavator hydraulics are better than backhoe hydraulics in speed and feel. Just curious, since I now have the option to flip a switch for the different pattern.

Hi Zeroo:
I'm only 550 hours into my excavator experience but have about 1500 hours on a mid-sized backhoe. Here's a video you might enjoy. (The guy runs a Deere backhoe next to a Yanmar excavator. It's interesting.) I asked the same question when I bought an excavator. I couldn't get my head around the ISO pattern very easily--so I just changed the pattern to SAE (John Deere or backhoe pattern) and other than learning to drive a tracked vehicle the transition was easy for me. I'm looking forward to what the real experienced guys have to say on this topic. I still use my backhoe regularly so I don't want to learn ISO. I'm an old dog and I don't want to learn new tricks even if ISO is more efficient. Best, Allan

You just need to think for about a day to convert over, when you have a few thousand hours of base experience. My favorite combo is a fleet with Case backhoes with Case controls, since there is nothing to them to get confused about. Jump off the excavator and onto the Case hoe seamlessly.
I last had to run a JD hoe without switches probably 25 years ago. It took me a day to hit the ground with grace, and about 3 to do complex push maneuvers with it. That is where it gets tricky and you end up about 3' off the ground, saying "THAT is not what I wanted to do!"

Funny thing is, muscle memory is real. Everyday, normal operation you'll probably be just fine. But, that one day when you get into a oh $hit situation, your reflexes will kick in, and you might get lucky, or you (or someone else) might get dead. Stick with what you know. All the pattern changer does is reverse your inputs to the control valve. All pressures, flows, response times are the same.

My personal experience--I started out on Case backhoes, with 3 stick Case controls. Then I bought a Case 580 that had JD type wobble sticks. It took a bit before I got comfortable, but I could jump from one to the other and back seamlessly. (With this exception--running the 680 backhoe, the hand throttle is there by your left knee, and on the 580 it was next to the steering wheel. No matter which machine I got on, I was always grabbing for the throttle in the wrong place. I still don't know why.)

Anyway, one day I got on an excavator, and it was some trouble to get my hands to learn excavator pattern, but once I did, I could still move from an excavator to the 580 to the 680, and not have any trouble with any of them.

Those Case machines are long gone. Now, if you switch the pattern from excavator to the JD backhoe pattern, I'm totally befuddled for an hour or two, and then I start to get ok. It takes a while longer to actually get competent. Now, if I get on a backhoe, it also has to be excavator pattern. I've lost the ability to run a backhoe with the other pattern.

As long as you can switch patterns on the machine itself, so somebody else can run it, I'd leave the muscle memory in my hands alone.

First machine I ran was back in the 80's - Case 580CK so long ago it was forgotten.
When I first started in dirt in the early 90's, it was with a Hein Werner C12 excavator with no swing brakes, 2 pedals and 4 sticks. Upgraded to a Drott 35 with 4 pedals and 3 sticks - close to an SAE pattern. Then to a Komatsu PC200lc-6 that I thought about changing over to SAE but then forced myself to learn the ISO pattern.

Theoretically, in my head, ISO makes more sense and is more intuitive. It was hard to learn at first so I would say out loud to myself, "lift, curl, swing, dump" etc. 15-30 minutes on the machine and then 30 minutes off to let my brain reset and then go back to it again. I did this for the better part of the day at the farm before I put the machine on a job. Once learned, I was golden. I had 4 different patterns on 4 different machines at the time and I could switch between any one of them and never miss a lick, even though some patterns were mirror images of others.

After all that I've run, ISO is much more intuitive and I'm glad that I took the time to learn it. It's all I run these days. It makes much more sense to lift and curl the bucket with one hand while crowding with the other.

treemuncher said:

Theoretically, in my head, ISO makes more sense and is more intuitive.

It makes much more sense to lift and curl the bucket with one hand while crowding with the other.

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I can't seem to agree with this in regards to the kind of work I do. The majority of the work I do either involves land clearing or cutting precise grade, and to me it's more logical to have the bucket and stick on the same hand.

What I would like to know someday, and I'd guess it's probably been asked and answered on here, is how and why did there become multiple patterns anyway? To me it's like a computer keyboard. You would never want there to be multiple versions of it, so what gives? I do not believe there is anyone out there that can switch back and forth multiple times per day, retain the ability to cut grade within a quarter of a tenth, and maintain full productivity doing it.

Shimmy1 said:

I do not believe there is anyone out there that can switch back and forth multiple times per day, retain the ability to cut grade within a quarter of a tenth, and maintain full productivity doing it.

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Once learned, it was easy. I ran at least 2 different machines with different control patterns each day without missing a lick. One machine was in the pit for loading out trucks while the other was usually on a job. Mirror image on the sticks and maybe the pedals, too. Each machine had a different feel or environment and it was easy to swap about as needed.

Maybe the fact that I owned Hondas at the same time I owned a Hodaka, Those Hodakas shifted 1 up and 4 down while all other bikes were 1 down and the rest up. After the first few rides, the difference in sound and feel keyed my brain into what I was on so that shifting was correct. I also had a Yamaha RD400 later on with rear set pegs that had to shift backwards compared to conventional. Never a problem. The human brain is quite adaptable.

Had a job recently loading stone with Deere controls, trucking then spreading with Cat controls, Add a Hood log loader into the mix and I am all out of whack.

Personally I grew up on deere style when I worked at the cat shop I got half there on iso the id go run one for dad come Monday morning id attemp to rip the shop down at work. This was a biweekly accurance

It's all what you learned and are comfortable with. If you like JD (sae) pattern and are OK with it then stick with it. There are pro's and con's to each one. Around here we call the JD pattern farmer controls and I do wish they would standardize one and eliminate the other. As far as I know every brand excavator leaves the factory with the Cat (iso) control pattern. It's a bit difficult to get on a machine to try and run it while working on it when the controls are opposite of what you are used to.

Shimmy1 said:

I can't seem to agree with this in regards to the kind of work I do. The majority of the work I do either involves land clearing or cutting precise grade, and to me it's more logical to have the bucket and stick on the same hand.

What I would like to know someday, and I'd guess it's probably been asked and answered on here, is how and why did there become multiple patterns anyway? To me it's like a computer keyboard. You would never want there to be multiple versions of it, so what gives? I do not believe there is anyone out there that can switch back and forth multiple times per day, retain the ability to cut grade within a quarter of a tenth, and maintain full productivity doing it.

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Patten law was most of it when cat came out with there machines you could get either way but that was 20 years after the controls were invented