We've been renting excavators with hydraulic breakers mounted on them with typical autolube systems to keep the tool greased. A common problem (with renting these units) is the operator does a poor job of keeping the autolube reservoir filled with grease thereby allowing the tool to operate with no lubricant. Recently we've started using an autolube from Allied Construction Products. It looks like it's a Lincoln built unit with the Allied brand name, but the neat thing about this unit is if it's ran dry of grease in the reservoir it will prevent the hammer from operating. The unit has the typical "paddle" inside the reservoir to stir the grease and to feed grease into the lower grease pump as it's being dispensed, but the difference with this unit is it has a switch mechanism on the paddle that as long as there is grease in the reservoir, the pressure of stirring the grease keeps the switch mechanism in an open circuit. When the grease is not present, the switch mechanism closes the circuit sending voltage to a relay. The switching of the relay takes power away from the auxiliary circuit solenoid on electric controlled aux circuits. On hyd pilot valve operated circuits, the relay sends power to a solenoid valve in the pilot circuit going to the aux control valve, when this solenoid valve is powered up, it sends the pilot signal to hyd tank instead of to control valve thereby stopping hammer operation. I installed this unit on a pilot operated aux circuit. When you depress the foot pedal to operate breaker, the round, green colored pressure switch powers up the autolube so it's working anytime the breaker is operating. To the right of the pressure switch is the solenoid valve that dumps pilot signal to tank when grease reservoir runs dry. Everything to install the entire kit is provided by Allied, I just had to come up with the fittings to connect the solenoid valve into the pilot circuit and run a hose to tank. The one addition I did to the install was route all the wiring to an electrical box mounted behind the cab, fitted the relay inside the box, as well as added a terminal strip to connect the wiring and added a digital hour meter to record hours of breaker operation. If you own a machine with a breaker fitted to it, you might consider contacting a local Allied distributor and see what it would cost to add this to your hammer. We recently had to rebuild an Atlas-Copco HB4200 because the Contilube fitted to the breaker didn't provide sufficient lubrication to the unit. Before we knew what was happening, it wore out the tool and bushings in the lower end. About 12 grand later, it got a new Allied autolube with 3 grease pumps. :yup
The bigger hammers we rent have an auto lube installed. It is self contained on the hammer because they get rented with or without machines. Its the only way to make sure they are greased. View attachment 82524 They get plastic tubes of hammer paste and a few sent along for good measure. If a hammer come off rent and has excessive bushing wear due to not lubing, then the renter is billed for it. I like the disable feature when it runs out of lube.
Good point on renting the breaker only Lee, we don't rent breaker only, not at this point anyway. And that Cat unit is an Allied breaker, nice.
I think most Cat dealers are also Allied dealers. We have been waterproofing a few hammers for under water use. Seems like a lot of low head dams are being removed.
A lot of folks don't know you can mess up a hammer and machine if you use one underwater that hasn't been prepared for it.
Any picture or description of whats involved in water proffing a hammer?
Basically it is all sealed up to keep water out and the area where the piston and bit are is fed with compressed air to make a positive pressure to keep the water out. If not the piston will actually pull water and debris into the hydraulic system and ruin the machines hydraulics. the hammer manufacturer will usually have a waterproofing kit and procedure.
Cheers lee
I learned my new piece of information today regarding the waterproofing. Thanks!