Can anyone tell me the right attachment to drive 2" pipe? It looks like I have two different options available for a breaker from the local equipment rental. They have a Melrose 2570 or a Paladin SFB 500.
Not sure if what I have to say will be very helpful. I know a company here in Australia called “Thor” attachments make and sell a rock breaker hammer that has a flat plate in place of the spike or chisel. They do a kit that has both spike and driving plate and apparently you can swap between ends in a few minutes. I imagine it wouldn’t be hard to do the same with other hammers would just be a matter of finding a replacement “driving plate”. I expect this is the problem you have? I was going to get one of the Thor kits for my mini excavator but haven’t got around to it. We currently use a hand held air operated post driver for fencing and hitting in star posts and have adapters to hit in 2in and 3in pipe. We usually use 3in pipe for end assemblies and drive them about 3ft in. These could be a possible option too. How far do you have to drive the 2in pipe and what is its use??
Outfit we cleared land used 4" drill stem (casing?) For fence. Just pounded it in with the 330 excavator bucket without anything special.
Driving a sandpoint well. I was able to manually pound it 12ft. I tried the gas powered post pounder but it's weaker than my hand pounding. Only 45lbs impact energy.
So just remove the pointed attachment and run it without a piece?
I don't know if either of those options will work. I have a Danuser T post driver that will also drive up to 2 7/8" oilfield pipe. It won't start driving until if feels some pressure from the Tpost or pipe, meaning you have to have someone on the ground holding the post and you set down on the post and start pounding. Works excellent for Tposts, worked pretty well on 2 3/8 pipe as well. Those rental items are probably the same way. If you remove the breaker part, I don't think the internal anvil will function until it senses some weight. If you drive the pipe with the breaker on, you'll likely deform the top of the pipe in the process.
Plus, I think that pipe would create hell with the bushings in breaker if you remove the breaker point and use a pipe that most likely would not perfectly line up with bushing diameter. One idea is see if the rental place has one of their used breaker points laying around and have a cup wielded to the end of it. Have someone hold the pipe, place the pipe in the cup and drive it down.
I just did a google search for “rock breaker post driving cup” and I got lots of options for you. The Thor ones come up but lots of others and you can buy a forged driving cup separately! Just need to match the measurements of the cup to the breaker you want to use. You need something on the hammer… if you put the pipe up the guts to use the internal anvil and it deforms in there and locks, good luck explaining that to the hire company!!!! Welding bits on an old point could work for a short time but some people I know did that for a hand held electric jackhammer to drive “Y or T” posts and it kept breaking. Hitachi ended up making them a forged one and now you can buy them as an attachment
Hydraulic post drivers very common around here, you will need as mentioned the post driver cup on the breaker. A number of companies build dedicated post pounders, for example Montana Post drivers. I do know of local welding and machine shops that have fabbed driving cups, so can be done.