Hi, We are a manufacture of heavy machinery attachments, but we are new with excavator thumbs. Currently we offer the CAT progressive style thumbs for both pin on and pin grabber options. We want to develop Non progressive thumbs too. And Ideally I would prefer to make it fitting other brands than CAT. I'm wondering, it seems even if the Pin size is the same for different brands, the width of stick is often different. So the thumbs are very difficult to be built as universal fits? Anyone knows how to solve that issue and make it as universal as possible? Thanks
I would guess you would have to make the backing plate that wields to the stick just for the excavator in question. Deere and Hitachi are the same. CASE and Link Belt are the same. Komatsu and Kobelco would be their own plate. Some of these sticks may be the same width as some others which would reduce the number of plates if that is the case. If the only difference was the back plate and everything else would piece together that would not seem to me to be difficult to produce. On a personal note, I cant imagine getting a thumb that is not Pro Link, but different strokes for different folks.
I have been looking for a thumb to fit my JCB JS220LC for some time, I don't like the prices I found so far. A used hydraulic thumb for JS220 from a seller asking for $7500 + shipping. And manual thumb runs half of that price. All seem to be weld-on thumbs. A possible solution might be several different sizes of general-purpose thumb plus mounting kits that unique to certain makers/models.
Thank you for your reply. Yes we make pro link thumbs, but those are even harder to be universal. There are different linkage and the back bone. The plate should be easy, if that's the only issue. My concern is the width where the thumb pins on the stick, seems all brands have different width?
We are kicking in the market with good pricing, we have been making other attachments like dozer grader rippers, truck tailgates for many years, but new with thumbs. So the first trial for a year or so is quite good, with the progressive ones, now we need more knowledge of what to develop and how to make it more universal.
I bought a universal thumb for my 210 Volvo and it fit perfect as far as plate width compared to stick and pin width. It was like $4500 complete, and name brands wanted $10,000+. Didn't make sense to me to spend that much on a $60k machine.
Are you talking about a pin on thumb working with a quick coupler or just the thumb that is pinned on the bucket? In the Pacific Northwest, virtually nothing is sold anymore without a quick coupler and the pin grabber type has won out over the wedge styles. The pin grab quick couplers only have to be thin enough to go between the lugs of the narrowest bucket you are going to use. The jaws in most cases will reach far enough to grab both pins.
When you say progressive thumb are you talking a bucket pin mounted thumb with the cylinder connected direct on the the thumb or the progressive linkage that has its cylinder running a linkage similar to bucket linkage that runs the thumb?I see a bit of an issue with the universal thumb thats plate mounted and the pin on thumb thats on the pin grabber compared to a pin mounted thumb on a wedge coupler.different pin centers means the thumb will bind on the bucket as you rotate the bucket in or out ,sure you can still hold stuff but you lose a huge amount of control for operations like stump piling and demo sorting.
We have both now and yes pin grabber thumbs seem to be more popular. But we still sell quite some pin on ones. I guess people in different area have different preferrance. And yes the pin grabber thumbs are narrower than pin on ones.
That is our pin grabber progressive thumb, we made it similar to CAT ones. Those are difficult to make it universal. We are trying to make out non progessive hydraulic thumbs universal, seems also difficult since the width of stick where the thumbs mount on is different.
In the mid 80 s a friend and i started up a shop building attachments . We built many of the non progressive link thumbs ,always with wedge type quick changes. We had to build a different one for each brand of machine ,no way around it. Stick widths and and pin centers were always different. We one customer that wanted his John deere buckets to be compatable with Komatsu . The end result was one machine would curl too tight and one would not dig down a straight wall at a long reach doing a deep cut . I think the way to be universal is with the plate mount but you give up the ability to follow the bucket right when your clamped on something.
Thank you for your reply. Ok that has made it a bit more difficult for us since we are premaking the thumbs and keep them in stock.
I like your thumb design. I run HPF thumbs, your design and theirs look very similar. I find that thumb design near perfect for grabbing material from concrete to logs. Just enough curvature with the thumb to grab with, and the four prongs are excellent for grabbing.
Thanks!
What you would have to do is make your thumbs wide enough that they fit the widest stick in that weight class and then provide shims to the people with the narrower stick to place on the main pin between the thumb and the bucket ears.
Thank you very much for the idea. We were thinking about the same. Will it make the thumb less nice while using?
I don’t think so. Most thumbs come with shims anyway to accommodate for different boss thicknesses on the bucket.
Great, thanks, will check what we can do about it.