Show us your Arb Diggers please.

[BunyipBen]

The worm drive is painful mate. We just got one and it’s sooooo slow.

Is it a trade off worth living with for the strength and ability to hold loads?

[john meehan]

Is it a trade off worth living with for the strength and ability to hold loads?

Depends what you are doing with it I think. Ours is on a smaller machine and it’s just a pain to be honest, takes all the flow from the machine to make it work. We changed the motor and it’s still bad.

With a shear I think it would be grand but we have a 5 ton we with a normal rotator and have no problems with it. If your just feeding a chipper or moving stuff I’d go that route.

[BunyipBen]

The WD9 is the model I am being supplied, it can do 5 revolutions per minute so 12 seconds for a full circle. Not super fast but I am willing to give it a go in the fixed application that is being setup. I would also be interested in a pendulum mount but will wait for now.

[LGP Eddie]

3 minutes ago, BunyipBen said:

 

Is it a trade off worth living with for the strength and ability to hold loads?

 

In my opinion No and I won’t sell them on a Grab or Shear.

 

Quite simply if you want to Rotate a Grab or Shear reliably with a worm drive for consistent hold with all the shock loadings that can occur, then only a Tiltrotator, or the worm drive from one is able to do that.

 

Utilising a lighter duty worm drive for what many describe as positioning an attachment and then trying to limit its use to lighter loadings is fraught with danger.

The time it all goes wrong is when something is trying to get away from you, the loadings ramp up quickly, often with a bit of shock loading and the weakest link of an underspec worm drive is where the motor bolts on.

Basically it’ll blow the motor off and an instant catastrophic failure with no control.

 

The solution is to overspec a standard Rotator which will give in the event of shock loadings, and another route is to utilise a solution more often seen on selector grabs or the like with a slew ring Rotator.

These are not known for solid hold, but by adding in additional motors they can  have power and hold increased to a perfect balance of power/hold/give for such applications, and will give reliable operation without the worry of damage.

This route is ideal for excavators, as the extra motors suck up the higher flows that if not properly regulated kill worm drives.

Not unusual to have four motors sucking up around 80 ltr/min to give good hold/power with a nice controlled break away point.

 

I’ll just leave this example of a genuine Rototilt worm here, it’s not the sort of thing you see on a Potato box tipper!

 

 

 

Eddie 

 

[Canal Navvy]

I'm trying to remember how long ago I first saw an Engcon tilt rotator working at the SED. There did seem to half a dozen of us who spent half of the day watching it and trying to find out what it was ??

[LGP Eddie]

Just now, Canal Navvy said:

I'm trying to remember how long ago I first saw an Engcon tilt rotator working at the SED. There did seem to half a dozen of us who spent half of the day watching it and trying to find out what it was ??

I worked with a guy from up north who first explained it to me. He claimed his ex boss brought the first two over for a specific job for Balfour’s back in the day.

He’d tried to get them onto Rail work with little success, but it inspired me to find out more.

 

Saltax at Windsor Racecourse was my first real encounter and took the leap soon after.

 

I’d guess Hugh Clixby must be one of the earliest adopters of the concept I’d know of.

 

Totally different to today, where the information is readily available, Buckets and Attachments of all kinds ready to integrate with the systems, plus plenty of experienced users to pass on first hand knowledge.

 

Eddie.

[Matthew Storrs]

2 hours ago, LGP Eddie said:

I worked with a guy from up north who first explained it to me. He claimed his ex boss brought the first two over for a specific job for Balfour’s back in the day.

He’d tried to get them onto Rail work with little success, but it inspired me to find out more.

 

Saltax at Windsor Racecourse was my first real encounter and took the leap soon after.

 

I’d guess Hugh Clixby must be one of the earliest adopters of the concept I’d know of.

 

Totally different to today, where the information is readily available, Buckets and Attachments of all kinds ready to integrate with the systems, plus plenty of experienced users to pass on first hand knowledge.

 

Eddie.

Something that tends to put me off- and it’s purely speculative as I’ve never used one. I don’t want to use the word abuse, but  typical real world situation which I counter- grappling with boulders- digging out ditches and ponds etc- how would an engcon stand up to working immersered in water, that boulder/log that’s too big to lift so you end up rolling it around, big stump that needs coming out, I’m not saying I’m rough on machines- quite the opposite but there always seems to be the odd situation crops up where yeah you’d want a bigger machine but the job needs doing there and then so tend to push the machine through it. I just wonder how robust they are?

[LGP Eddie]

I think the original Kubota says it all really?

10 years on that’s the original Engcon SK10, and what’s more that base Kubota is able to put far more loadings through it than a standard base carrier, due to weighing more and having a wide platform that doesn’t give first.

 

I’ve used them pretty much to their limits on all types of carriers, and the loadings the Liebherr dishes out are savage.

 

Like anything it can and will break, but speccing it right in the first instance and getting a good install are the main priority for long trouble free service.

 

Hard to explain, but that boulder, log or stump etc all of a sudden has a multitude more ways to attack it with a Tiltrotator, often just being able to dig underneath all round or get to that one tough root is enough.

 

They’re not cheap, and spares are savage, certainly not for everyone, but credit to the manufacturers they really can’t try any harder with free dig days and demo’s etc to let people get a real taste of them.

Anyone with the slightest interest will be most welcome at any of these events, and absolutely no sales pressure or atmosphere of trying to mock any first time users, quite the opposite, with everyone encouraged to have a go.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eddie.

 

Edited September 26, 2019 by LGP Eddie

[Matthew Storrs]

Fair play Eddie- that says enough, specially pic 3!

[dig-dug-dan]

On 24/09/2019 at 23:13, Jwoodgardenmaintenance said:

Has that got the rams on the sides? Wouldn't be be too clumbersome for the 6" bucket trenching would it? If not it'd be worthwhile looking at it ? 

 

Jack 

Try to get digbits buckets and hitches if you can. Far  better than harfords imho.

I would say the 9 and 12inch buckets are the least used out of all of mine,,so don't stress about them too much.