I was just surfing You Tube and came across this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6CzS0w-iOI The woods are pretty much just like that for us right now, logging has been difficult at best! Anyhow the red and white machine, looks like maybe a Takeuchi 135 or 138?, has a rotator on the bucket. I've never see something like that before. Did a bit of interweb searching on it and it looks to be a somewhat common thing in Europe, not so much in the US. Seems like it would be really handy for doing fine grading work where you can slope the bucket. The last job I did was putting in a few ditches and culvert pipes. I got it as close as I good to final grade and then hand raked the rest. Granted I only had a digging bucket with some knarly frost teeth on it too so not like I could smooth it out well. I've haven't seen other bucket pics on here with frost teeth, guess it's not too common? I did those ditches around the middle of June and I was hitting frost 1-2ft down.
it looks more like a takeuchi 250 with a tilt rotator on it. its bigger than a 3.5 ton machine i think. yeah they're real common in Europe but they use tons of interesting attachments for their excavators over there. we use frost teeth for when it gets cold enough to and digging shale or even a lot of blacktop or concrete just for the little bit of added penetration. it doesn't take much to change teeth and you can wear out wide teeth pretty quick on hard stuff so its worth the time. that tilt rotator buckets nice but its around $15,000 for that sized machine, and because of that most people use their blade or move some dirt to make the machine sit at the angle they need. its hard to justify a $15,000 bucket on a $50,000 machine. but it would be slick to have often.
That was sort of my thought. I've gotten by just fine without, but didn't know if it was one of those deals... "how did I ever do it before", or just a toy
id imagine once you bought it you'd never want to go back to moving the machine and messing around with a regular ditching bucket but it'd certainly hurt the pocket at first. plus you'd have to buy their bucket or put new ears on your machines buckets to make the quick hitch work.
$15,000 for a $50,000 machine ???? … I guess i'd say it's no different than owning a skid-steer, I know some of my attachments are close to that price … some of them i've priced out at double that figure (like a drum mulcher) …… It's all in what you value u'r business versatility at …… JMHO ….. Cheers
IMO, a quick hitch and a minimum of 3 buckets is required for any mini excavator- one of which needs to be a ditching or clean up bucket. If it's a tilt bucket, even better. If you're only using a digging bucket, you're under utilizing your machine. You may balk at the price tag for the tiltrotator. But look at what he accomplished in that video. What equipment and how much man power would you have to throw at that job in order to do what one skilled operator did in setting up the logs like he did? The justification for the tilt rotator is that it allows one operator to do a job that would normally require an assistant. Subtract the cost of paying a helper and the price tag starts to look pretty good.
The reason I was looking into it a bit was moving logs. I don't have a mini-ex, I just have rented one the couple times I needed one and couldn't do it with my Bobcat. I was thinking with rotator and a thumb a mini ex would be pretty handy for use as a forwarder and piling logs. Sure not as good as an actual forwarder or log loader but at this stage I don't have that kind of $$. I didn't figure it would carry a 15k price tag though. A person can buy a log grapple with rotator for about $3500-4000. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Valby-GR50-...avy_Equipment_Attachments&hash=item416ec9953b Something like this came to mind: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMN-NXcgQDg#t=16 I have a skid steer with a grapple and it works fine but it's not really useful to pull logs from the woods. Don't have enough room to move around with a log.
I take it by your handle "ValleyFirewood" that's what you do for a living in Alaska ??? ……. Even an excavator with a bucket or rake and a hydraulic thumb will work awesome for decking and/or loading wood ……. position to the deck and the truck or trailer to be loaded is the key to KISS …… we've done this hundreds of times and it keeps the machine the way you bought it to do other tasks that an excavator is good at doing …….. It's not just the cost of buying an attachment, such as a clam or rotator grapple that is expensive, it's the cost of installing and plumbing the machine to make everything work. I like the vid you posted ….LOL….. I guess it was the tunes that made it special ……… LOL !!! ……. cheers
Been a couple years but when I checked bobcat USA would not sell or install one on their machines
how about this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5I3auXZZSc the owner is a forum member
I have ran machines with tilt rotators on them for a cuple of years now here in Norway, and we have log grapples for it that we use not only for logs but also building stone walls. The machines get a lot more versatile with a tilt rotator on it. We use the same quick hitch on both the boom and the tilt rotator on all our machines so when we are digging in rock we disconnect the tilt rotator to save it from the stress of the rocky conditions. We use tilt rotators on a 8 ton New Holland, 14 ton Hitachi and a 23 ton Volvo. And we have both Engcon and Indexator tilts. I would recommend Engcon with propotional controls. http://engcon.com/international/en/engcon-international/equip-your-machine.html?brand=7