I have noticed that excavators in different parts of the world use different bucket setups on 'general' purpose machines. For instance, in Australia the machines I have used and seen usually have a quick hitch and a minimum of 3 buckets including a mud/grader bucket. Standard buckets are used for digging and mud buckets for loading, etc. In the US on the other hand, machines I see in videos usually have a standard bucket without Q-hitch and those buckets are used for everything - digging, loading, sand, mud, etc. Many of them have thumbs too which seem very useful. I am just generalising here based on what I have seen... I'm sure bucket use is different in different parts of the US also. In the UK I have seen a lot of machines are fitted with only a mud/grader bucket and are used in most jobs. I was watching a show once were they were demolishing a building with a mud bucket and also loading the rubble. I have also seen other unsuccessful attempts of digging hard soil/rocks with a mud bucket... which doesn't make much sense. Is there are reason why operators prefer mud buckets in the UK, softer soil maybe? I may have been watching the wrong videos, but it's just something I have noticed... So what kind of buckets do you prefer in your part of the world?
In qld all our machines in the company I work for, total 12 excavators all have a tilt bucket, general purpose, ripper and a 600. We then have a couple of extras such as sieve bucket, hammers, grabs etc. Not one of our machines have a thumb
depends on the size of the machine on a 13-20 tonner it comes with a quick hitch normally a miller pingrabber hitch, and out on hire with 3 buckets, 18 or24" , 13 tonners have a 42 or 48" digging gp bucket, and the 20 tonners have 54" or a 60" digging gp bucket as standard 6 foot gradr on the 13 tonners and 7-8 foot grader on the 20 tonners, on a muck shift loading lorries or dumptrucks ,its normally a 20-30 tonner with a 54- 60" digging bucket, i have noticed some operators with digging buckets with 6,7 and even 8 teeth in a digging bucket which is wrong, 5 is plenty for penetration and is way easier on the machine. over 35 ton is normally a heavy duty rock ,muck bucket for loading and digging, most machines here and in the uk have quick hitches by now so if you need a ripper or a tilt bucket , i have also noticed that inthe us they use a gp bucket and a thumb for everything ,its good in one sense but without the quick hitch its slow for when you do need to change a bucket. when im working for farmers cleaning drains and clearing scrub i use a 13 ton hitachi with a quick hitch and a tighe 6 foot ditching bucket, which is a heavy profile grader with 8 teeth, i can do a neat tidy finished job on the soil and batter the banks of the drain without changiong the bucket, this type of bucket is very common in the north west of ireland , scott buckets also make this bucket similar to the tighe and a nice shaped bucket to get right to the botton of a narrow drain.
We use a large demucking bucket on the 325 BL. It also serves as a general utility bucket for spreading rock, compacting, loading quarry rock into the separator and loading spoil into the dumptruck. On the time we are actually excavating marl, I put on a smaller 40" bucket so I have a lot more breakout force.