Post knocker for mini digger

[Stephen Blair]

I am looking for advice on these machines, I have looked through utube, and they look great and fairly priced imo, anything I need to look out for from the guys who work them daily:001_cool:

[madmatt]

What make you looking at? we have a PostPuncher at work and in our humble opinion its worlds most awful knocker going!

 

We have a very experianced 360 driver but even he struggled with the thing, because there is no headstock on the knocker just a bracket it seemed to be a constant battle to keep the knocker vertical in both plains which is often not easy as the machine doesn't have the flexibilty in both directions quickly. often requiring turning the under carriage through 180 degrees so the blade was able to alter the angle. thus chewing up ground or endless tracking

 

We did have a set of bosses made for the bottom of the tube to so that when using smaller posts they were centrailised in the tube being hit by the centre of the weight. We have a post puncher now on the tractor loader and that has a headstock and hydraulic tilt left to right and obviously forwards n backwards on the loader its still not as good as a coventional 3pl mounted knocker but is better than the digger mounted one.

[Stephen Blair]

Cheers Mat, all our work is on uneven ground, we have limited access so on the mini digger seemed the best choice, I never thought about no adjustment.

You could have just saved me a lot of hassle, really appreciate that.

[madmatt]

I think one with a headstock and adjustment would be a very versatile tool and really good for boggy uneven ground. trouble is I suppose the headstock gear adds weight which will make it unwieldy on a mini digger. Some one else may come along with different opinions to us though!

[Rich2484]

Tractor mounted always. Dont like the digger ones, adjustment doesn't happen. Tractor can be moved anyway you want on hydraulics or my manually moving the lower links adjustment to get it exactly were you want it.

 

Can a small tractor not fit into work zone? A little turf tractor or even a 135.

[lewiswood]

Don't knock the digger ones, they have their advantages over tractors, they can so many more places a tractor can. Its great for fencing in woods and on slopes. And on the right machine its great, They won't work on a 1.5 tonne machine but we use ours on a 2.8 and is fine with a 120kg weight. I think protech are the best post bumpers.

[Matthew Storrs]

With quite a lot of experiance of digger mounted ones and different models. look at the vector powerdrive ones, the beauty of them is when you put it on top of the post the weight of the boom/postdriver is taken by the post itself and makes for far more effective hammering, don't get one with a leg as they are very easy to bend when making adjustments to the post, what size machine. IMO experiance a digger mounted one in the right hands is far quicker then a tractor one. downside is you cant have as big weight- depends on digger size tho.

[Matthew Storrs]

Don't knock the digger ones, they have their advantages over tractors, they can so many more places a tractor can. Its great for fencing in woods and on slopes. And on the right machine its great, They won't work on a 1.5 tonne machine but we use ours on a 2.8 and is fine with a 120kg weight. I think protech are the best post bumpers.

 

protech are ok but you have to have that leg down to steady it all, the vector design doesn't have the problem and the design for lifting the weight is far less 'heath robinson' then the protech ones.

[Matthew Storrs]

pros for a digger one over a tractor one,

.can reach almost anywhere, can be used to grade any ground plus use other attchments etc, quicker one man operation. uses far less diesel. much cheaper to buy.

downside- you have to have a tractor to tow bigger diggers around, can be less accurate driving over a decent fully hydraulic tractor model.

2.5-3 ish ton digger makes for the most efficient carrier.

[Stephen Blair]

The diggers 1.5 ton.