Whats your take on Hyd Thumbs? with or with out? and what are your reasons? for having one, not having one.. etc... Hyd Thumb over Manual Thumb? Other things like Hyd Quick couplers..? I personaly dont think its worth having an excavator of any type with out a thumb.. becomes a worthless piece of equipment then. around here you dont see machines with thumbs.. hyd thumbs at that.. I dont even think manual thumbs are good.. The hyd thumb is by far the best invest you could make. for a few extra thousand dollars and really it isnt much money when u spend 200,000 on a machine... you now can do land clearing properly... pick boulders up, virtualy any job is now possible. that you couldnt do with out a thumb. productivity is also increased. The hyd coupler system I think is also another good invest ment.. with as many times as I switch buckets in a day one day I counted 64 times... the buckets stay in better shape.. using the right bucket for the right job. if your digging hard pan with your tooth bucket and the truck shows up inless then 20 seconds u have your clean up bucket on and the truck loaded and gone then go back to digging the hard pan. its very use full and once u have it you wont ever get on a machine with out... I cant imagine getting out of the machine to take out the wedge anymore like I use to.. or before that having to drop the pins and gett it all perfectly lined up. Anyways Whats your take on all these new attachments?
We used to clear lots and roadways without a thumb years ago. We got a manual thumb about 9 years ago. It surely makes life easier. The only time we use it is when we clear trees. We then take it back off. I still load stumps on trucks without the thumb though. Honestly, I don't see the need for a hyd thumb. Manual thumbs work just as good. You deal with what you got to get the job done. As far as a quick coupler, they are very nice. We do not have one, but I wish we did. I like to use a smaller bucket for trenching and then switch to a bigger bucket for backfill.
I use my thumb every day. Link thumbs are the only way to go, although non-links are better than nothing, given a choice it's hydraulic link thumbs for me. I use a thumb to set stone for retaining walls, load rock into trucks, we do a ton of orchard removals and they're impossible without a hydraulic thumb, I use an 8 foot grade beam that you hold with the thumb and use it to grade with. To me, buying an excavator from the 3 tons all the way up to 30 tons without a thumb is a huge mistake. There's so much you can't do without one. In some operations, a thumb just wouldn't get used, like a 45 ton excavator used strictly for trenching and laying pipe. But for the "do all" excavator, having a thumb is a huge part of the machine because without one you're limiting yourself severely. We ordered our 312 with a hydraulic quick coupler mainly for ease of use. When you buy a new machine, why not get all the bells and whistles? And it's really nice to be able to switch buckets in 30 seconds.
Once your used to having a hydraulic thumb its hard to use a machine without. Most machines around here have a hydraulic thumb even 3 ton minis have a thumb along with rubber tired backhoes. As for hydraulic quick connect its more things to go wrong. If your doing allot of bucket changes or from breaker to bucket then maybe it might be worth it. Machines used in the Pacific Northwest and B.C. are spec'ed differently because we are dealing with clearing brush and trees or lifting boulders. You look at machines in Alberta most of them don't have thumbs on excavators.
Yes a hyd coupler is another thing to go wrong but so is your hyd thumb. infact anything on the machine is another thing to go wrong.. the hoses wear out like any other hydralic hose. Your right its what you get use to.. I started running a mini with no thumb.. the machine was limited.. and the thumb allso protects your stick aswell. there have been sometimes where I find the thumb will end up in the way but I feels thats a small price to pay to be able to do many other jobs with the machine.
I know guys that are so good with the thumb and bucket they can throw rocks with it. In my mind a excavator should come standard with a hydraulic thumb.
lol its not very hard to throw rocks.. I do it almost everyday on the job Im on right now. I would have to say its one of the easyist things to do actuly. whats hard is picking a sealed can of pop up with out crushing or popping it. I have only seen a few guys do that.. I pop it every time. if it was up to me they would come standard as well. Progressive thumbs are great to. they have the same linkage as the bucket and allow the thumb to wrap around the object and have much greater closing force. great for boulders, if your building walls often.
A pop can? Now you've given me a challenge. I'll report back on my results Monday.
I thought that maybe I should attach a picture.
is that a thumb from around here scott? i can't think of anyone off the top of my head who has a thumb on an excavator
Get pictures.... I wanna see angle on it from all sides showing it off the ground and still sealed up!!! hahah
Alright, I'll try
It's pretty hard to find an excavator without a thumb here in the PNW except for those huge excavators like mentioned. A lot of machines from Pape like hitatchi and Deere have CWS hyd. thumbs with buckets and QC, a few guys go local and use PSM which is also a good product. Either way all those things are getting more and more common. A lot of guys that do foundation stuff love the QC's because they just switch inbetween buckets when loading trucks and digging the foundation. Every now and then you'll see a mini with a hyd. progressive linked thumb, but most have direct links which are okay.... Blake WA
I think both thumbs and quick connect are almost necessities. I have run very few hoe without a quick connect, but never even heard of a thumb until I moved to CA 3 years ago. We don't have any thumbs where I work now and it kills my production when doing demo, separating trash, sifting through dirt, picking rocks, and grubbing they sure make life easy.
Hey Murray, what part pf the province are you from? I know that JD Irving has a couple of actual Cat 330B roadbuilder excavators with thumbs that they use in their forest division as well as some nice forestry rigged D6/7Rs. The picture I posted is from BC. Campell River if I remember correctly.
It looks like a pretty small machine... 120 size? smaller? You often wont see anything smaller then a 300 in the bush around here anyways. and they are always equiped with thumbs
Actually it was a Cat 330 L. Whats the biggest rig you guys will run for a forest roadbuilder out there? I've seen pictures of up to 45 tonne (sHitachi 450)
good ol' foggy saint john lol i wish the rain would go away thumbs just don't seem very popular here for some reason.only one i seen was one on a 320 in sussex owned by cunningham.
30 - 45 ton machines are common... much bigger and its hard for them to move them around even with the 14 ft wide trailers they use....
The new forestry reg's don't allow contractors to build wide roads anymore so that eliminates the bigger machines. Usually now a 300 sized machine is the biggest machine used.
I was gonna say, the regs for the size of roads being cut has been slashed way down. I competed in forestry competitions through my local FFA chapter and I was talking to some old timers about that kind of stuff. They said back in the day there were little or no road restrictions. Now, you can't cross a trickling stream without throwing down 60" CMP, a massive headwall, and a spillway.
Yeah we ran in to the problem at our job.. which is being turned in to a huge subdivision.. but we were suppose to stay 30 metres away from the "creek", lol our foreman told us after we had a 30ft high brush pile sitting over it.. and had built many roads over it to... lol fisheries doesnt like us much!!
oky doky
Welcome to HEF coondogger1! :drinkup
Attachments Wanted: hey all , We are looking for a grappel for a 790 elc john deere, or a thumb for the machine. Clearing 50 acres here in Surrey, so even a hydralic thumb would be in mind, but the grappel system works the best for clearing. thanks for the help searching:beerchug :beerchug
I'd get a thumb. There are plenty of aftermarket companies that build excellent thumbs in BC.
Watch out for that creek Hahaha. That is hilarious, MVFD. I can't wait to see what the tree huggers and leaf lickers have to say about that one. Make sure you are pushing over some old growth trees with you dozer when they show up. I love the part about building the road over the creek. Poor fishie wishies.
I have 3 machines with grapples and one with a thumb. My 2 minis have thumbs, I think it's pointless to have a mini with out a thumb. Quick couplers are nice like said previously. When working in the street its nice to bounce from a trenching bucket, to a cleanup bucket in a few seconds. Anyone else here have the wainroy wrist o twist attachments?
http://www.hpf.com/home.asp http://www.psmcorp.com/product_search.cfm
Surrey Land Clearing Well, what's on the land in Surrey that you are clearing, soiled. How big are the trees, or are there buildings there already that you need to take out?
thumbs on excavators I love the hyd. thumb on my ew170 volvo! i work 4 a highway dept. i use it all the time! it works great cutting brush along roads picking out limbs from fences,ditches creeks ect. removing culverts ,loading scrap culverts on trucks placing concrete, loading logs from tree removals getting trees out of a house from a tornado !! lol picking up tree stumps to shake off dirt ! man i use it for everything you can think off!!!
thats good
I think that like most attachments you can get along without it but after you have it you wonder how you ever did it. my 311 has a wain roy wrist and I wanted to ad a hydraulic thumb. So I did a lot of research. There are a lot of weld on thumbs available but their problem is that they don't follow the bucket rotation. A pin on unit will follow the bucket. We decided to create or own thumb.It took a while to get the geometry right with templates before we went to steel but it was well worth it.I purchased an electronic diverter valve and installed an old style floor dimmer switch.now the machine will switch from wrist controll to thumb in an instant. Some people say they can do it all without a thumb but when it comes to things like building stone walls or loading brush I think that they are worth it.:usa
thumb pic dont know if it will come up but I'll try to post a pic of the thumb we made.
Looks like the thumb from Hell!
hey nice job with that thumb , I always say work smarter NOT harder:drinkup
Hydro or not I have a mini excavator with a manual thumb that was on it when I bought the machine. I have found that it is very difficult to use it because you have to be at the right angle and distance from the object. I have looked into trying to make it hydraulic but I have not found the right piston. My 2 cents.
Welcome to Heavy Equipment Forums gussy197! :drinkup
Thank you very much Countryboy. I have a ton to learn from everyone here. Can't wait.
RE: Thumbs Hydraulic thumbs are much better although they can get quite expensive to buy new. If you dont use it very much,it would be worth your money to buy a manual thumb.If its one that you use daily then hydraulic is the only way to go
I have a manual thumb for my machine, I like it better than hyd because it is a little quicker & easier to take off the machine. I know that you can fold up a hyd thumb(seems to get them almost out of the way), but the weight is still there, and that cuts back on your bucket size, so I would rather just take it off when i'm not useing it. Now if somebody made a quick coupler for a hyd thumb, that would be really slick.
I have just bought a new mini excavator, a JD 50D. I do not believe I will put a thumb on this machine. I would rather have a bigger bucket and not need to swing the weight of the thumb. However I have found a manufacter of a self contained grapple. This way I can sort, and pick up brush, rocks, etc. but when I am done, I just switch back to a bucket. Then the thumb is not in my way. Here is the link to the self contained grapple: mcfaulkner.com/self-contained-hydraulic-grapple.asp RT
Nice, It makes me wish I had a quick coupler for that 500 LB bucket of mine.
I would say that most excavators should have a thumb. Exceptions being those that are on mass excavations that would suffer from the extra weight of the thumb, limiting the amount of material that can be scooped... but if your on that big of a dirt moving operation, you likely have several hoes on the jobsite and one of them is gonna have a thumb on it.
thumbs I have a 18,000 lb machine and the weight of the thumb is 180 lbs plus the weight of the cylinder. I personally could not live without it and do not really notice diminished capacity when loading material. The added advantage overall is well worth the extra weight. In fact, I am in the process of upgrading from a direct link thumb to a progressive link set-up to gain more value in degrees of rotation. This is essential for the type of work that I seem to get. The only disadvantage that I can see is that the progressive link system is wider at the base than a direct link set up. I have often contemplated and wondered how a helac power-tilt and powergrip set-up would serve me, but in the end - for what I do and the work I get at least a direct link thumb is a must.
The thumb we built does sound heavy around 600lbs but with it folded back it doesn't have the same leverage weight as a bucket extended.I really haven't had any issues with what I can move for dirt. What I can say is that I can get hold on rocks far bigger than I could without a thumb. One piece of advice is that it is just as important to have your thumb fold as far back as it can as well as rotating forward. You need to be able to reach the bucket out to its full extention without the thumb hitting the ground before the bucket. There are to many things that you need to watch out for while operating without adding any more.:usa
hyd. thumb I just installed a hydr. thumb on a komatsu pc-27. the auxilery valves were in place. My question is. Is there a relief vale that can be added and if so where? My concern is be able to hold presure on the thumb against the bucket with out worrying about preasure build up. thanks The ccondogger.
There should be a safety valve already in place the will limit the max pressure in any of the hydrolic system. Generally I like the thumb set a little lower than the bucket so that the bucket can overpower the thumb should there be some reason that they are both at max pressure.