Vague title...I know, but don't know how to phrase it. I finally had the chance to really work The Beast while digging a trench. Need to go about a hundred feet to help drain water (which we are getting a lot of lately) to a drainage ditch that runs through our property. So I am using the bucket a lot. That means I am combining hydraulic movements trying to keep the trench depth even, etc, etc. ---NOT EASY. You guys that do this for a living have my complete respect. What part of the hydraulic system is the at the heart of these maneuvers? It seems that combining some movements - curling the bucket in while drawing the arm back and lifting the load simultaneously does not happen the way I see it done on the Tube. The big arm takes precedence over the bucket movement so I end up doing one movement at a time. This is not a show stopper for me. I am just trying to learn and manage my expectations. Thanks for any opinions or pointers/links to information. R
Lay the bucket on the ground flat as far out as you can reach. Lay it up as close to you as you can get the bucket bottom flat. The sweet spot is about 6 ft long between those two spots and closer to you than the far reach. Don't try and make more than about 6 ft of flat bottom because you're working out of the optimum operating range. Up closer the boom has more power. You can dig faster. All laid out is not a good place to be. Smooth just takes time. I wish there was an answer but that's it.
Also make sure you aren’t comparing apples to oranges in the videos you watch, it’s a backhoe not an excavator. Excavators have multiple pumps and as such you can quickly and easily blend functions when digging. You can do the same with a backhoe with practice, but with usually only one pump, one function is stealing flow from the others which makes it slower and not as smooth. Also some makes/models use different hydraulic setups (open vs closed center) which plays a roll too. Biggest thing is just practice, try “digging” a flat bottom trench with the bucket a few inches off the ground, keeping the bucket level. Do as skyking mentioned and try to work in the middle of the stroke on the cylinders. When you are working in that sweet spot the stick is more vertical and you have to move the bucket less to keep it flat. Different machines respond differently and some are better than others, so just play with it and see what works.
Operating techniques for the tractor loader backhoe https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p4432023.m570.l1313&_nkw=Operating+techniques+for+the+tractor+loader+backhoe+&_sacat=0 Might be worth a look, I bought it long ago. Joe H
Thank you guys for the responses. I have a couple days idle while things dry out. I'll use that time to bone up. Thanks for the link Joe. Appreciate it.
My father always said slow and easy. Try to keep the rpms around 12-1500. Steady and smooth wind the race. Never get in a hurry. I have a310a John Deere, 1977. Out will take practice, like anything. Go slow to learn. Speed and accuracy will come
What you can do for practice is reach out as far as you can on the ground with your bucket flat to the ground and curl it up a little so you don’t dig. Then bring it to you with the teeth the same level so it doesn’t change height. That way you can get a feel for the sweep that you can’t see with the bucket in the ground.
Thanks Hollis. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast - I think that's how it goes. @MG84 : I understand. I think of it as a Swiss Army Knife. You explanation of the single pump helps. It seems like the big swing arm takes precedence. I did get better at it on day 3. @skyking1 : My initial temptation was to reach out as far as I could to avoid having to move the hoe. On day 3, I came to the realization about the sweet spot you are talking about. So practice, practice, practice
The cylinders are sized very carefully to the loads that they will see and the max load the backhoe can take. The swing is very weak, it puts too much stress on the whole rig to swing under load, so those cylinders have way less leverage than all the other cylinders. The tradeoff with making the swing weak, is that the swing becomes fast because the cylinders have less leverage/smaller bore effectively. So the swing will always be touchy. The bucket tilt and stick retract should be somewhat balanced and easy to feather the way you want. Then the boom lift will vary so much based on how far out the bucket is and how full it is, so the boom will be next trickiest behind the swing. Hopefully that will help you focus on the tricky parts, even if you feel yours operate differently, you'll have a starting point. Slop in the joints makes for a less smooth operation and throws off the operator also. You just have to learn to ignore that bounce.
Delmer...you have just nailed exactly what is going on. The swing is very touchy. It will move very fast left to right and vice versa. I've learned to be careful on the stick. The bucket tilt and retract are much smoother and easier to combine movements. Staying in the "sweet spots" really makes everything smoother. I was worried that something may be wrong with the hydraulic central command -- whatever that is You guys are awesome. Thank you. R
The swing is very touchy. It will move very fast left to right and vice versa. That's a feature, good for smashing things. Joe H
Yeah, talk to my brand new barn when I was trying to cut a ditch for drainage... I only got it a little bit a few times. Over the course of time and use you'll instinctively start knowing what movements will work at the same time and your digging will adjust accordingly. I can't say what will happen when, on my machine, while I sit in front of this computer, but when I'm on the sticks I know that I can swing and curl at the same time, for example, or curl and stick in but not boom.
That would be you, in a single pump machine
There in lies the worm...
A variable pump would help a little, but still not as nice as an excavator. You could put orifices in the swing circuits to slow it down, or smaller/more orifices if it has them already. They didn't make backhoes to sell used ones to homeowners though, they sold new ones to professionals and experienced operators with new machines don't have the same problems amateurs have with sloppy machines. The other issue with the swing is feathering it works ok, but if you use another function and stop, then all the flow goes to the swing suddenly and it jumps, and then you release the levers and the whole thing bounces. Try to get in the habit of releasing the swing first, or being ready to lift the boom more to take the flow to slow everything in that case.
Swing on a backhoe is the hardest thing to get figured out. When dumping the bucket it helps to extend the stick while swinging. Coming back it helps to use another function but sometimes you can't. You need to learn to gradually release the lever instead of all at once and/or not move the lever the full travel. I find the hardest thing to do is swing a foot or less to get the bucket where I want it. A few inches is tricky because it's easy to go too far and then you have to come back. It doesn't help that the levers on my machine have a ton of slop in them. I think they were somewhat sloppy fron new though. I've read some of the early excavators with mechanical joysticks had a lot of travel which resulted in a lot of slop in the linkages over time.
The amount of times I'm working with someone that is spotting me digging a hole or whatever that they say "over here" "Over Here" "OVER HERE!" or emphasize that they are pointing "over there" is insane. What is rarely realized is that I heard you the first time and I see what you see but the majority of my moving "over there" happens extremely slowly either because I know it only needs to be a few inches or because of the overshoot that I'm trying to avoid. My swinging lever touch is very gentle, and millimeters at a time usually, for precision, and I know once the swing starts it'll move plenty quickly for me to let off when I need to, without much retrying. There's not a lot more uncomfy than feeling your machine rock side to side because you hit the swing too hard.
Not unlike picking things up with a skid steer with foot pedal controls and someone is steadying it. You don't have as much fine control with your feet so it takes a few seconds till anything happens and you want to go real slow.