Don't really have anyone to teach me per say, but I am making a ramp to store material. It's snow so it's very inconsistent. I keep getting into the "rocking" motion start at the bottom, push a pile to the beginning of the ramp. Slowly lift up a bit, then when the front end starts to pick up I slowly put the blade down to try and level off and then just push up the ramp. Then for no reason it tips forward, or leans back a little bit and if I don't correct it, every time the track goes over it. The bump becomes more exaggerated. Thus the rocking begins. I don't really have anyone to watch, or to get advice from. I can usually get the rocking under control just by lifting the blade so it dumps material and then makes a steady increase in slope. But I want to carry the material to the end of the ramp not dump it half way. Excuse my lack of knowledge on correct terms. But I thought instead of fighting with myself trying to figure it out more. I would ask. It may just be inconsistent material under the machine and the weight compresses it at different heights.
I think you explained it the way most people do to get rid of ripples, by loading the blade and loosing a bit of material in the bumps. You can come back and make a cut and keep it level to further the material up the ramp. I learned a lot from 2 people and it was like you said by observation. One thing one of them told me , my uncle , keep your work area flat as possible and you will be less fatigued at the end of the day.
My question is I want to stop making them in first place. I'm operating the dozer right now and frustrating myself. It's like every time I touch the blade down it starts the snowball effect. Most times I'll have a full blade and nice push. Then without me even touching the blade it starts to hump up and down. It would make life easier if I had one of the other guys from different shifts that have been doing this for years to watch.
What size dozer and what kind of blade?. The only way to remove the hump is to back up and take it out. If it is a angle blade move it 10-20* right or left so the tracks do not hit at the same time the hump is made. If you can increase the ramp up starting area and make the adjustment angle further up the pile it will also help. Snow is like pushing sand/mud/clay unless it's completely frozen. Keeping out of your tracks every time and carrying less may help. May want to run by and watch the other guy showing up a little early.
We all had to learn and you will find out something right away,there is more to it than most of us thought.Our friend ZKent (SP) here says it in his signature "Make it look easy"and that is exactly what any highly proficient operator will do to the layman,we have no idea what is involved at getting the machinery that we are running to perform efficiently until we try it for ourselves.That said and I will repeat it again,make yourself a platform,a stage to launch from and if you can get that part down satisfactorily the rest of the push should go pretty good.If you can make one pass to your liking then set over about half of the width of the blade on your next pass using the previous pass for reference,keeping the blade level with the last pass and if the last pass needed corrections you can attempt them on this pass. When I was flying years ago my instructor taught me to watch the horizon over the engine nacelle of the aircraft and you could tell if you were gaining altitude or losing altitude from the reference of the two points.It is the same with the blade and hood of the dozer,if you hoist the blade and the hood drops then you were not controlling the blade or carrying a grade and was probably digging a hole for yourself.It will come to you and don't fret about it,we never stop learning and that is they way it should be if you are doing it right.My reply to those who ask how do you do that is often "you have to have the ability to see in front of the blade" and if most any finish operator will think about it that just about sums it up.Good luck to you and be thankful that you can learn while pushing snow.Ron G
Yair . . . This may seem a strange question but these days, considering the different types of controls on dozers what is considered the "correct" way of operating a lever? I ask this because I was recently watching a bloke in an oldish open cab D6 and he wasn't doing all that well. He seemed to be babying the control and trying to run it gentle and smooth like as though it was made of egg shells. As most folks here will realize I am a carry over from the cable days and a PCU it is like a steering clutch . . . clutch in or out and nothing in between. Consequently the lever, generally about two feet long was operated in a series of short "stabbing" motions. I have carried that over onto hydraulic dozers and it has always worked for me . . . I mention this because I feel ippielb's several references to operating the blade 'slowly' may mean he is trying to be too smooth and gentle and could be part of his problem. Any comments? Cheers.
I was thinking that if this is an older machine with quite a bit of slop in the blade linkage that it could be part of the problem. Once the blade moves up/down because of slack it would just get worse as you go along.
If he hasn't changed jobs, he's pushing up a hill of snow with a new D8. I think the inconsistency of the snow that he mentioned, along with constantly pushing uphill are the two biggest complicating factors.
Ive do the same thing with a 980. The inconsistency of a snow pile, temperature and what is going on underneath. You probably had a wet spot at the base and it compacted and froze. The fluffy stuff is a bich to ramp with. It keeps compressing and pushing out underneath. BE CAREFUL!
Yes you guys are correct, i am still running the new D8T with the U-Blade. I have tried a few different techniques, trying to be slow and methodical on the joystick trying to slowly correct to try not to gouge the base under neath the tracks so once it gets over the cut, it "teeter totter" over half way and drops, then the blade cuts another gouge. Then i have tried to compensate fast for the sudden drops and rises. I would try and time the expected gouge, with a counteract of a lifting motion of the blade, then when the machine flattens out i try to lower the blade again to get myself flat. Often i lower the blade too much, and make another gouge. But sometimes it works too well it seems and then i'm back on a flat steady slope. Here's a video i got buddy to take of me going up the hill. Every day is so different. Today i couldn't do anything, but last week i was on fire, making good flat even pushes for most of the day in 2nd gear keeping up with over 75 loads an hour. http://youtu.be/u-urVJM5GQY I think the main problem is the inconsistency of the base underneath the tracks. And without having corks on the tracks i spin out at the bottom of the ramp sometimes trying to get started uphill. So it often leads to a steep incline off the start, leading up for a painful push the rest of the way up the ramp. If i had something in the sky to focus on other then the steam clouds from the refinery next door. It would probably make things easier. I have good ears so i am usually + or - 1 slope side to side, and within 2-3 degree slope going up the ramp. Until the teeter tottering starts. The snow that comes in to the snow dump here varies in consistency. Some is old snow, hard, full of sand, and ice. While some is fresh and light and fluffy. Then with the cold temperatures the top layer of the ramp gets a hard crust on it a few inches deep and the under neath is soft and bottomless. So once you break through that crust you'll spin out, and then dig down, then the blade cuts more then you can push, you guys get what i'm saying haha. Thanks for the tips.
With inconsistency in the snow , I think it will be hard to keep wash boarding from happening. I'm sure there is that certain person that can do it better, if you know the type. I compare this to pushing off fill being hauled in , that contains anything from sand to concrete. Trying to get it to be smooth is a challenge for any operator. I say this because your trying to keep up with the trucks bringing in the snow and basically you don't have time to keep it smooth. I may be totally wrong as well , I've not had the privilege of pushing large amounts of snow. That is a nice tractor your running. One other thing that comes to mind , this could be like grading dry dirt then encountering a wet spot.
I guess i'll have to live with it, it just makes a rough ride coming back down the hill backwards. It teeter totters and thumps you every time you go over a washboard. I feel i could do better in my 963d with keeping it flat sometimes. But the amount of snow being moved would be so minimal compared to the D8. I still giggle every time i get a wave going infront of the blade. Unless anyone else has any suggestions?
Yair . . . I can't get that video to play. Obviously I have no clue about pushing snow or any other bulk material except for a few days stacking woodchip. (About here I will duck and put my hard hat on) . I was thrown in at the deep end at midnight and had never seen a woodchip pile. I was just told to keep it pushed up away from where the trucks were tipping . . . the tractor was a D6 with about an eighteen foot stick rake. In my ignorance I set myself up with slots and it was a piece of cake. However when the crew came in at daylight the foreman gave me a right old serve, reckoned I had a "mess" and to push it level and keep it nice and even. Any thing for a quiet life. I ran backwards and forwards shagging around burning fuel pushing rills for a couple of days just to keep him happy. I could have handled twice the amount of trucks pushing slots but the regular blokes reckoned they were flat out keeping up. Cheers
Im not much of a dozer hand, but your video doesnt look bad. Backblade on your way down and dont get frustrated!
My time spent operating machines can be measured in weeks only, but I've spent the last 30 something years fixing them and I can confidently say that, (pretty much agreeing with Scrub Puller earlier), "feathering" is not a good way to get fine movement from hydraulic or cable controls. Experience tells me that the best way to accurately line up holes or pins is to "slap", "jerk", "stab" the controls or whatever you want to call it. It follows that the same technique may apply to operating the machines.
I'd say it's the material you're working with. Its just like sand or gravel one hiccup and it's hard to correct it without back dragging. It takes time. You can't run a machine for a week or two and expect to get it perfect. Hang in there, in about 10 years you'll be good..LOL
I watched that video,my goodness,you are working for free every other day aren't you?What a joy to have that dozer to look forward to every day or night as the case may be.You have a big hump that you have to conform to in your push path and if you could knock that down so you had a straight shot from beginning to end you could take a nap on the way up instead of having to make grading adjustments on the way. Scrub Puller,when I was overseas our company,58th Engineers was allocated one dozer for each platoon,two were equipped with winches and one had a double drum unit on it to pull a scraper.I was assigned to the 1st platoon which had the double drum unit and it did not take me long to figure out that the cone clutch on the front of that TD-18 could be improved upon.The shaft seal usually leaked on those units and and they were not very smooth as the 90wt made the clutch and the drum brake grabby,something like the suicide clutches on the old motorcycles. Well,I abandoned that front unit right away as I had the rear unit not being used unless I had to do scraper duty so that system made my life easy.You could feather any motion up or down to your liking and those long levers coming over the fuel tank gave you all the control you could want. Here are a few pics of an old D8K loafing,she just had to push off the stockpile created by two arctics hauling to me and the site foreman took a lot of pics to document the job and gave me a cd of them when I got laid off.It was a federal job so these days of digital cameras that is the was to go.Actually my avatar pic was taken on that job.Ron G
Yair . . . Thanks for comment RonG . I just asked the question to educate myself as to how other folks run equipment. I have had a lot of time on cone clutch LeTorneau DDPCU's and it was mandatory to keep them well adjusted and avoid any slippage . . . if they slipped through maladjustment or maloperation they would over heat and cook the seals and, as you say the 90wt would get onto the clutch and brake surfaces and in our case they went not so much "grabby" but would slip . . . a temporary fix was to get some dust out of the precleaner bowl in there. As I mentioned the secret to trouble free operation was to have minimal slippage between the friction and driven surfaces . . . in other words the clutch was pulled hard and fully engaged with no feathering. When grading the blade or scraper cutting edge was controlled with a series of quick full clutch engaged jerks rather any attempt at smooth movements. In later years with the Caterpillar (I think) No.25 and 29 PCU's the principle was just the same . . . they were driven like a steering clutch (they used the same clutch plates) and were either fully engaged or fully disengaged, nothing in between. Cheers.
I try to work 12 hours a day and as many in a row as they'd let me run the dozer. I usually run it Sunday-Tuesday, and then Wednesday i do something else because another guy comes on shift that has seniority over me. It's hard to cut that hump out of the ramp when you have so many loads coming in at the same time if i had an hour or two of time to be able to maintain the ramp i'm sure my life would get easier. But there's no stopping the public from hauling snow. It's a free service, anyone can come drop snow off here free of charge. But they are talking about starting a seasonal pass up next year. Which will cause major flooding problems come spring, no one will remove the snow so all that snow that would've been in the pile at the snow dump, is now on the streets and parking lots of the city. Melting and putting a major load on the drainage system.
Using the rear CCU for controlling the blade was light duty for it and it was probably the smoothest combination that I ever run,it was almost like mind control,it seemed like you could just think about making a blade elevation adjustment and it would be done.Of course,and I concede that this was over 50 years ago and maybe my mind is slipping a little too don't cha think?Ron G
Yair . . . Gotcha RonG . (laughing) I often think I need a bit of precleaner dust somewhere to stop things slipping but all in things aren't too bad and I really can't complain. What you say is spot on. A well adjusted PCU was a dream to grade with, fast and very forgiving with a touch of built in float. For some years I specialised in clearing fence-line along side existing fence and I preferred cable to hydraulic . . . down pressure sure is nice but not at all essential. Cheers.
I am sure that you will agree that cutting your teeth on a cable dozer will do wonders for your career as an operator.Just cutting hard ground will introduce principals that you might never encounter on a juice machine.Voila....lol
Yair . . . RonG .To me this is an interesting discussion but probably a Hi-jack of the O/P's thread . . . sorry ippielb (wry grin) I will start a thread called "operating techniques" or some such . . . all redundant these days of course but it may be of interest to some. Cheers.
You are correct to be sure and I apologize to the original poster.I really just posted those pics after I made the comment that his stockpile had a hump in it to show him how it could look but my work did not always look like that depending on whether I had the time to fuss over it or not.Sometimes you need to lose material and that will be the end result as was the case on that job,we only had a specified area to stockpile on and since it was hazmat it had to be contained on plastic.I,too,enjoy this conversation but I am old now and this is a tie for me to the past and I must be careful to put things is perspective,if I blab too much just remember,you will be old someday.LOL When a truck gets stuck everyone is a truck driver.All done.Ron G
No worries, we had a double up day at work where two shifts come in. I was in the loader, which is a nice loader, brand new Cat 972M. 400 hours on it hehe. But i watched the other guy who uses the dozer on my days off, and he had the same problem with it starting to make washboards like me. But he seemed to get it under control pretty fast. Some times not so much. So i'm guessing it is just the material that i work with, and looking like fast compensations for the blade dropping and then the track climbing up the washboard are the way to get it under control.
I finally got around to uploading a video of the problem I was running into. Here it is. http://youtu.be/fnEnL5qY-2Y
I was always taught to do the short quick adjustments, not really jerking the blade control, just "bumping it enough to keep smooth and adjust for the bumps or dips. It's always easier to hold grade with a full blade then trying to push crumbs. The old saying of slow is smooth and smooth is fast. In other words taking your time till you get the hang of it, and once you find your niche, speed up.
that is flat out the coolest job ever!!! weve had tons of snow and ive had tons of fun, but i envy you!
Well last night was a busy night thats for sure. We had the d8t going, and then a case 821f. The 972 cat is down with a broken front window. The guy who was running the d8 last night went home after 10 hours, i stayed for 12. Well in the end we got over 900 truck loads of snow last night and i pushed probably 800+ loads with the tiny case 821. I probably was only stopped for 3 minutes all night, enough time to take a leak. Started my shift got running at around 6:30pm, i got out there with the loader, and there had to have been 450 loads of snow waiting for us when we got out there, pushed as much as i could to try and get the guy on the dozer started making a smoother approach angle on the piles, then i took all of the truck hauling on a wall stockpiling the snow stacking it as high as i could with a degelman strong box snow blade. By 9:30-9:45 we had gotten another 380 trucks come through, varying between tri axle end dumps, tandems with or without pup trailers, and 1 tons with trailers. The girl we have counting and marking down the trucks that came through counted 780 trucks by 3am, i never started heading back to the shop until 5:15. And it was starting to pick up speed again with quite a few early birds starting to haul for the day. Can anyone calculate how many yards of snow the degelman strongbox can push? It's a 50 series. 50" high, 18 foot wide, 53" deep. actually just googled it, turns out it's 7 cubic yards. And each time someone dumped, it was mainly at least 1 bucket full, or blade full. I wish a guy could calculate how much snow that blade could push heaping. And the people stack the snow on the trucks to the nuts. Literally until they can't fit any more on. Here's a video showing how we remove snow off the streets. We put on snow sides on our trailers so we can blow even more snow in, close to twice the amount as a full level box full. http://youtu.be/q2iDiotITyI If i had to guess, i'm thinking i pushed over 10,000 yards of snow last night in my shift.
Around here they plow the snow windrows to the middle of the street and then blow it into the trucks. Most of the hauling in towns business districts is done at night. A lot of snow gets packed into a truck when blown in by them big blowers. When the snow windrow is 5 ft high the trucks loaded in 45 seconds average. I would venture that up to 1.5 times as much as loading with a front end loader.
I do not see a problem . Keep shoving that **** up the hill . It is going to melt , it is not final grade on a dirt job .