Was thinking about useing my track digger on the silage pit when i am filling it. The job is normally done with 4wd 120hp tractor which weighs about 5 ton. The silage would be made from grass and needs to be well compacted. Not sure if a digger would be good for rolling as it has low ground pressure but it has massive weight. What do the rest of you think
i think it would work, i mean i walk stuff down with an excavator all the time, and they do a good job at compacting whatevers underneath them, especially a 40,000lb machine
It would work just great. All that extra weight would pack a lot deeper into the pit than the tractor does, so you could place thicker layers between packing passes and get the same job done. Or, you could pack just as often, and pack it a lot tighter than the tractor. That is as long as the machine doesn't get stuck! Good luck
I don't think you'd like the result. We always packed our pits with a little 80 horse tractor and it worked perfect. One year we had a bunch of Peas and Oats and the stuff was to slick to work with the tractor. Stuck all the time. We worked the pit with a D6. We really worked it good but still had a lot of burn. Grass may have a different result than Oats though. We usually just packed Alfalfa. I don't think any crawler machine will point load like a rubber tired machine.
The Tractor will proberly have a higher ground pressure than the digger, even a 20 tonner! We did pull silage back from the edges with a digger. great for that but needed to rolled with the tractor after1
I've seen it done with a cat 320CLU. I don't really know how well it works, but it wasn't the first time they did it either.
There is a farm around here that does it with a PC220. They have been doing it for at least 5 years now so must work decent for them.
A track machine provides much less compaction than a wheel machine 25 percent of it's weight. A wheel machine's rolling action is a major part of it.
Ive seen excavators used on silage stacks back in Kiwi land.
Use the bucket to pack it down. Or you can use the bucket to lift the front of the ex up and use only the real part of the tracks for compaction. The main thing with compaction is not to try and compact too thick a layer. Although what you really need is a loader with sheepfoot wheels