Show us your Arb Diggers please.

[jonnygurkha]

I have a tb016 and for its size it's very powerful. I have had it lifting large lengths of poplar, with a thumb. As woody Paul says a grab will mean you lift less but it'd be so much more useful. Is yours piped for a grab? 

That makes sense, the thumb is cheaper and probably more versatile day to day. My machine is piped for a breaker. I think the thumb is the way to go. Thank you

[woody paul]

1 hour ago, jonnygurkha said:

 

That makes sense, the thumb is cheaper and probably more versatile day to day. My machine is piped for a breaker. I think the thumb is the way to go. Thank you

 

With a thump no messing about changing from bucket to grab just use bucket that is fitted or just change to bucket or rake for the day's job. 

[Lowestoft Firewood]

I also have a TB016 with a thumb and its really useful, but when scraping up rakings (hopefully getting proper rake soon, just use ditching bucket at the moment) it really needs something wider on the thumb to grab the material to put it in trailer. 

 

If you are getting a thumb made up, I would recommend making what is essentially one side of a grab as well as a thin thumb for logs.

 

Also i recommend using a ripper tooth rather than a bucket to grab timber, fits in between logs and only leaves a small rip in the ground if grabbing stuff on the ground. I got mine from Rhinox.

Takeuchi TB016 Ripper Tooth

RHINOX-GROUP.COM

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Rhinox Ripper Tooth to fit Takeuchi TB016. This high-end ripper tooth is ideal for breaking hard ground, or stripping stubborn...

 

[doobin]

A thumb is OK for some stuff, but hopeless for others. A grapple is a good halfway house between the thumb and a proper grab, especially if you make the back half hydraulic. Any time lost swapping to grapple is soon regained by not messing about with a thumb IMHO. A normal fixed (or even hydraulic) thumb is good for big rocks when trenching, any other jobs make it look clumsy compared to a grapple.

 

As the guys above state, the design of the thumb as well as the attachment it's paired with makes a big difference as to what you can do with it, and from this point of view it has merit. However, you've got to have a lot of one sort of work to justify making an awesome thumb/attachment combo up for it, so I stand by my point that a grapple is a much better all rounder for most.

 

If all you are doing is loading firewood, by far and away the best soloution would be a cheap dangle type grab/rotator plus an electronic flow divertor. With a thumb or a grapple, you really need to constantly be at 90 degrees to to pick up/drop off point, which is hard to achieve in reality. Being able to rotate is a game changer, and for dangle mount on a mini digger it's often cheaper than you think.

Edited February 20, 2021 by doobin

[william127]

11 hours ago, jonnygurkha said:

Advice wanted please. I have a TB016 and I’m wondering if it would be up to the job of loading Ash cordwood into a tractor trailer and then onto a processor? The cordwood is probably 8-12” diameter. Firstly do you think the machine would lift that weight and secondly if so, should I go for a bucket and thumb arrangement or bite the bullet and get a grab with rotator? TIA

Depends how high your trailer is and how heavy your timbers are really! If you need maximum height and minimum weight of attachment a thumb would be best, but if you have plenty of height/weight to spare a grab would be more efficient.

I had a thumb on my kubota kx36-3 and that was not as good a machine as a tb016, I lifted and shifted hundreds of tons of timber with it, including some far far too heavy lumps! 

I started out using my ripper tooth as my bucket for lifting but I switched to these RSL bolt on teeth on a 9 inch bucket and that was much much better.

The other good things about a thumb are the fact that you can always have it with you, and they are so cheap that if you decide to upgrade to a grab you have only spent a couple of hundred quid on something that will come in useful for other jobs anyway! 

 

[woody paul]

1 hour ago, william127 said:

The other good things about a thumb are the fact that you can always have it with you, and they are so cheap that if you decide to upgrade to a grab you have only spent a couple of hundred quid on something that will come in useful for other jobs anyway! 

So can you use thump mount for strut for grab strut or do you have to add another. 

[doobin]

14 minutes ago, woody paul said:

So can you use thump mount for strut for grab strut or do you have to add another. 

Doubtful. Where the brace stay is mounted is particular to each attachment. Easy enough to weld on though. This was changing the grapple to the new machine- making sure the ram doesn’t ground out extended/closed and with dipper ram extended/closed. I have a different ram for fitting it to the micro as well. 

Edited February 20, 2021 by doobin

[Blake@waveney]

Gutted to say the least after a long wait including past 1st feb original delivery date got told today the dealer can not get the machine they promised. 

[doobin]

12 hours ago, Blake@waveney said:

Gutted to say the least after a long wait including past 1st feb original delivery date got told today the dealer can not get the machine they promised. 

I reckon there’s a lot of that going around. Think you’ve dodged a bullet though personally. As you have no access restrictions, you don’t need expanding tracks with the lower ground clearance that entails, especially with your soft banks. Consider stepping up from 2.4 to 2.7t on a proper excavator X frame. 

[jonnygurkha]

Depends how high your trailer is and how heavy your timbers are really! If you need maximum height and minimum weight of attachment a thumb would be best, but if you have plenty of height/weight to spare a grab would be more efficient.
I had a thumb on my kubota kx36-3 and that was not as good a machine as a tb016, I lifted and shifted hundreds of tons of timber with it, including some far far too heavy lumps! 
I started out using my ripper tooth as my bucket for lifting but I switched to these RSL bolt on teeth on a 9 inch bucket and that was much much better.
The other good things about a thumb are the fact that you can always have it with you, and they are so cheap that if you decide to upgrade to a grab you have only spent a couple of hundred quid on something that will come in useful for other jobs anyway! 
 

I think I’m swaying towards your suggestion of a thumb with a 6” bucket and some of those teeth. Did you go for the RSL hydraulic thumb? It looks fairly decent to my untrained eye. Thanks for all the advice from everyone [emoji106]