Help would be greatly appreciated. We took a cat 325 cl and took the stick off and attached a drilling mast to it. The question I have is how do I get the bucket hydraulics to run the hydraulics I need for the drill mast.
Not sure you can. You probably need more than one circuit for the drill. Auxiliary hydraulics are what you need. It would be pain in a $$ to use bucket flow for more than one function. You probably use bucket for your hoist for the drill head and aux hyd. run the rotation.
The drill itself has its separate valve body's to control which circuit to operate so I guess my question is if I hold the bucket control over to feed the hydraulics of the drill will the system work with the separate valve body. Yes it would be easy with auxiliary hydraulics but cat wanted around 10 grand to put them on .
We had Michels come thru here where I live last summer with that new power line. Tri-states drilling made all the holes and pillars for the poles. They had BIG case drills. I'm talking up to 8' diameter and 50' deep. Looked like 345 chassis on the drills. Not sure how fancy your drill is but these had at least side tilt and hoist plus rotation equals three circuits.
On our drill we have eight separate circuits that are contoured by the valve bank.
Depends on what flow and pressure you need. Might be possible but thinkin you will be putting aux on after a few holes. :cussing
From ever thing we've heard from cat the bucket circuit is suppose to be good for 60 gallons a minute which is enough to run the drilling operation cause not all circuits are being used at the same time hence the reason for the separate valve bodies.
Then to be quick about it, plumb in pilot pressure to bucket spool and go, use a 24 volt seloniod valve and toggle switch,
overworked's idea sure beats trying to hold the joystick constantly, without bleeding over to other functions, while using the other hand to run the drill controls. Aftermarket auxiliary hydraulics were about $6,500 or so last time I checked, but that was a few years ago. I bet they have gone up like everything else.
The problem with using the electric solenoid is that the machine is not electric pilot valves. We figured we are gonna take the hose off for the pilot put a valve and tee in and use a port a power to pressurize the pilot.
I think what was meant is to tap into pilot pressure, then run that through an electric control valve that you would buy, one that is normally closed, power open, and from there to the control valve. Then a simple on off switch to control pilot flow and make it work.
Yep, you need a 2 position three way valve, three ports, tee into the pilot pressure, tee into a return or drain line for oil going back to tank, and the output port goes to a shuttle valve teed into the control line from the joystick to the main valve spool, if you're capping the outputs from the joystick, eliminate the shuttle valve and just plumb the line direct from your solenoid valve to the main valve bucket spool. Might also want to take your return line and reroute, instead of pushing return oil back through the spool run the returning oil direct to a place you can tee it in before the oil cooler, maybe with it's own return filter. :my2c
The problem that we believe we have come up with is that on the bucket circuit the cat itself pressurized both lines to 5000psi and when you move the lever it actually opens the return. Does this sound right to any of the cat guys on here?
Nope.
I think you'll have some pressure there, but not 5,000 psi, should just be tank pressure if it has backfill checks, maybe in the port reliefs. The idea of pressurizing both sides of a cylinder constantly sounds dangerous as hell, if you blew a hose or steel line you would empty the hydraulic tank at full pressure and flow, not pretty.
But with these cat hydraulics being load sensing we believe that the pressure is there but not the flow until the command to move but I could be wrong.
But with these cat hydraulics being load sensing we believe that the pressure is there but not the flow until the command to move but I could be wrong.