Show us your Arb Diggers please.

[doobin]

27 minutes ago, monkeybusiness said:

The individual tines will bend if you are rough - they are only as strong as the thickness of steel will allow and you are putting all of the force of an excavator through them at unusual angles…

They bend back though - just learn from the experience. 

Yup, I’ve run three Intermecatto for a long while. The only way I’ve bent them is by doing something stupid such as trying to grub out a massive stump because you can’t be arsed to track back for the ripper, or trying to pull out a steel gatepost. 
 Usually happens just after you think “I’m gonna bend this if I keep

abusing it!”

 

as said, learn from the experience. A bad workman blames the tools. My Intermecatto have done thousands of hours of hard work for me, and the only damage has been due to abuse. 

 

[dumper]

8 hours ago, Malus said:

I managed to bend one of the tines on my grab this week. Bent it back with a sledge ok but it took a bit of beating. Was a bit surprised it bent tbh, has that happened to anyone else? It's an intermercato tg16.

 

Basically I was moving a lump of willow and I was rotating/dropping it off and when I slewed away one tine was lodged in a hole in the log. The log rotated and landed as expected but it just levered the tine and bent it.

 

 

Always been told not to bend steel cold, warm it up before knocking six bells out of it 

[doobin]

2 hours ago, dumper said:

Always been told not to bend steel cold, warm it up before knocking six bells out of it 

If you can bash it back cold it’s the best option with these grabs. If you heat them up it’s easier to get them perfectly aligned, but you’ll have to quench them right otherwise they will bend where yo heated them with the slightest knock in the future. 

[dumper]

23 minutes ago, doobin said:

If you can bash it back cold it’s the best option with these grabs. If you heat them up it’s easier to get them perfectly aligned, but you’ll have to quench them right otherwise they will bend where yo heated them with the slightest knock in the future. 

I ran tree spades  for a few years the advice on straightening bent blades was to heat them to hand hot 100 degrees or so then to straighten less stress on the steel especially if the steel is treated 

[doobin]

9 hours ago, dumper said:

I ran tree spades  for a few years the advice on straightening bent blades was to heat them to hand hot 100 degrees or so then to straighten less stress on the steel especially if the steel is treated 

You sure that wasn’t the advice on the quenching temp? If you say hand hot I’m guessing you mean 100 Fahrenheit, that would be a sensible quenching temperature but not enough to make the steel bend any easier when trying to straighten it. 

[Malus]

I wouldn't want to heat something like a tine unless I knew it had never been and didn't need to be heat treated. It's amazing how steels properties can be changed by heat - chuck a file in the log burner and see how it performs the next morning. It won't cut anything but you'll be able to bend it back on itself. But more to the point I didn't have a heat source on me and had a job to finish.

 

To be fair I wasn't blaming the tools and nor was I abusing the grab. Just interested to see who else has bent tines and how. If I had seen the tine was stuck in the log I would have put it down with a bit more care and not slewed away until it was free. Accidents happen and farming and forestry isn't exactly kind on tools! 

 

 

[Malus]

Thinking about it if the tines etc are made from hardox or some heat treated steel they are probably treated in sheets. Then you've got all the cutting and welding processes putting a lot of heat into the whole lot. Can't imagine they fabricate then heat treat? Then there's air hardening steels, I think chainsaw bars are air hardening. 

[richy_B]

How do people transport larger (5-8t) arb diggers?  Can you use an agri tractor and plant trailer if you are mainly doing tree shear work / vegetation work? 

[John Shutler]

1 minute ago, richy_B said:

How do people transport larger (5-8t) arb diggers?  Can you use an agri tractor and plant trailer if you are mainly doing tree shear work / vegetation work? 

I move mine with one of my tractors and a low loader trailer. I live and work in the new forest though so might be a bit different round your way

[doobin]

11 minutes ago, richy_B said:

How do people transport larger (5-8t) arb diggers?  Can you use an agri tractor and plant trailer if you are mainly doing tree shear work / vegetation work? 

Currently people are getting away with winging it. Very little enforcement and indeed the law itself isn’t totally clear.