I am shopping for a hammer for a 325BL Cat excavator, I have only worked on NPK hammers, Having Caterpillar machines and a good relationship with my local Cat house I would lean towards a Cat Hammer, probably an H130. But there are other brands such as Gorrilla that seam to be plentiful and a better price point. Are all these hammers equal quality? I do know NPK parts are wicked expensive.
You are bound to get a thousand different opinions with a question like that. Are you buying new? I know that Cat hammers have been made by other companies in the past (i.e. Rammer), but I don't know who makes them currently. I'm going to offer my opinion. I'll preface that by saying that I'm an excavation contractor (small in size). We perform complete excavation services for high end residential construction, in the rocky mountains. We build 10 gallon houses, on 5 gallon lots, in a gated golf course community. Primarily hard rock excavation. We occasionally work with blasting contractors, but we mostly break. After we break it, we also crush it. I have about 10 pieces of iron, but we run the breaker on either a '17 Deere 245G (60k#) or a '21 Cat 325NG (65k#). It is recommended to use 4k# breakers on this size machine, but I run a 5,500# breaker. Where we work, we break all kinds of different types of rock. Limestone, gneiss, granite, sandstone, quartzite. I don't have experience with very many different hammers. I've owned a small Bobcat Hammer (made by Stanley) for +/-15 yrs. I also own a 5,500# breaker that I bought new about 7 years ago. It's a Toku breaker (currently being sold in the US as Striker, and also rebranded as Komatsu breakers). Toku hammers gained great fame in the US when they were branded as BTI Teledyne breakers. BTI was bought by a conglomerate, and now the breakers sold as TBI are manufactured by some obscure Korean company. No longer the quality hammer that they used to be. I bought the hammer based on the recomendation of someone who has many breakers, and other attachments, that he runs on large Cat excavators (330 size and up). He started out with Cat hammers, and switched over to Toku breakers. Toku hammers are super simple, and thus VERY reliable. So far, my friends recommendation has proven to be well founded. I do a lot of breaking through solid bed rock. Sometimes in excess of 12' deep. My Toku breaker (TNB190) has performed very well. I've probably gone through about 6 or 7 points in the 7 years I've owned it. In all that time it has broken once. Some bolts backed out of the shuttle vale and broke. The hammer worked that way for a while and this caused wear to the shuttle. This required some machining, but all in, the repair was only about $3,500. Even with 7 years of hard use, I still have the same upper and lower bushings. The piston is still looks good when (observed when changing tools). The guy who repaired it said it's still in fantastic shape. Outside of this one repair, I have only had to replace hoses, tighten bolts, and replace tools. I can run the hammer all day long, and it doesn't have any heat related malfunctions. NPK Hammers have a good reputation. They are similar in design to the Toku but they have a lot more return line pressure pulses. In many applications accumulators are required to try to tame the pulses. I rented an NPK (the one and only time I have had to repair my breaker), and it was a waste of my money. I wanted to rent an equal size breaker as mine (5,500#) so that I could get a head to head comparison between Toku and NPK. My local NPK dealer (the local Deere dealer) doesn'y usually carry hammers with 80mm pins, so we rented the 4k# breaker when my hammer was being repaired. The hammer didn't work correctly when first installed, and even after Deere came out to get it working, it still didnt seem to work correctly, nor did it get through the rock efficiently. I can't say why it didn't work right, and it's probably not fair to compare it to a 5,500# breaker. I don't have any experince with Gorilla hammers, but my impression is that they are a lesser quality hammer. Hammers take a beating. Don't go cheap. Buy something that has a good reputation, and that you can get good support for.
Thank you for the information, I went with a Cat 130 Hammer because that was what was available local, within the vendors I currently use. I am familiar with the return line pulse issue, a local quarry is having this issue with a new hammer on a 365 Cat, and the pulseing breaks fittings over time.
Well, you've taken a dive into the deep end now. I assume that you will get good support form your local Cat dealer. Regardless, you have begun and education process. Pay attention. If you are operating, you have access to more direct information than anyone, as it relates to your equipment and application. Don't loose site of the fact that every issue you may have, is an opportunity to learn and do better. Many are fearful of breakers and the potential for high repair bills. These fears can be realized yet, if you operate with care, and maintain it well, you can get a lot of trouble free use from it. I have. Be sure to put hammer paste in it. My Cat dealer didn't even carry but a few tubes until I came along. Make sure you have plenty on hand and load the shIIt out of your tool. I find that the return line pulsation is hard on my hoses (they can wear prematurely and they can come loose), and the Stucchi couplers. I have yet to have a fitting wear out. Some of this is also compounded a bit due to the fact that my machines are equipped with thumbs, and that makes the hose routing a bit trickier. Wishing you the best success!
Furukawa(spelling)have a new type of hammer which is similar looking to an impact ripper for excavators. By the looks you can put some leverage on them unlike a conventional hammer.
2 tips. Always grease the hammer with weight on the moil. If you don't grease gets between the moil and plunger then goes past the seal into the hydraulic oil. Pumps hate that. Storage Always store the hammer upright when not in use,not lying down. The nitrogen will leak out.
I'll add to that: grease often and use the proper grease. Bushings aren't cheap and are usually a PITA to get out, especially the upper one in a 2 piece bushing setup.
A hammer brand I don't hear much about is Teledyne, out of Canada I think. An outfit I worked for years ago had 16 of them. They seemed very reliable. Punched through a lot of granite with them, some of that stuff was so hard a moil would only last 20hrs. That job was hourly plus moils.
A lot of the hammers out there are just rebrands of MSB, Allied or Atlas-Copco.
I was assuming this was the case with Caterpillar, just didnt know who made it. The hammer I purchased has the remote lube, you thread a tube of grease into the luber and it gives it lube on a regular basis.
BTI Teledyne breakers are what I was talking about above. This is not a brand that I would trust if buying new. If one was looking at an older, used model (one that was made by Toku, instead of whomever makes them now) it would still be a good breaker to buy (if in good condition), because there is still a very large aftermarket support network, and parts are still made by Toku. Auto-lubers can be great, but keep an eye on the tool anyway. There should always be grease drooling down the tool from the lower bushing. If that gets dry, it's not lubing enough. It would be interesting to know who currently makes the Cat hammers. It used to be Rammer, but they stopped when Rammer started making Allied breakers (maybe Rammer bought Allied?).
I think Sandvik owns Allied/Rammer now.