Yair . . . I get around a bit but have to say that in my seventy years I have never seen an excavator with a thumb . . . or not up here in Queensland. It seems such a simple concept there must be a downside or there would be heaps of them around. Maybe I don't get to places where they are used for specialised jobs . . . demo. and such like. I have watched the placing of rocks on retaining walls with conventional buckets and the blokes seemed to do just fine. It intrigues me the way various machines and attachments are utilised in different countries and regions for doing similar jobs. For instance the wheeled highway drivable excavator seems to be very common in Europe but I have never seen one of those here either. Any comments from excavator folks about these two issues? Cheers.
we used to weld on a fixed bracket "log grab" to the dipper of some of our machines which used the bucket to grip logs against the frame, was cheap and easy to fit and did the job
Head further north when the next big cyclone comes through, the council will have on hire what seems like every excavator and backhoe for 100miles, for clearing fallen trees, they go from full factory hydraulic log grabs to all sorts of backyard jobs.
I have never seen a thumb in the UK either, looks like an excellent addon
yeah saw heaps of them in america and on that gold rush tv show seems everyone has them back home in aus cant say i have seen one and hounestly they really should not add much to the cost as there manufacturing cost is very little extra on a bucket. we are actaully going to bring 4 in to QLD for stock in our yard and a few tilt buckets, tilt buckets every man and his dog wants one latly.
In my part of the U.S.A the hydraulic thumb is very popular. There is so much big rock that they really help. For demo and grubbing they are also very valuable. I know the PNW and Canadian guys are using thumbs with a quick coupler. That technique has not caught on here but seems handy as you can swap out buckets and run attachments. It is very common to spend half the day sorting rock on a dig up here so that is the main reaason for the thumb. I have never seen a thumb in Europe and they prefer a quick coupler and about 10 different buckets and attachments for their machines. The rotating manipulater attachment is what they use for demo and such and they seem very handy. Only about 30k though. The other negatives about a thumb are that they add weight and if you do alot of deep utilities they tend to get in the way when you have to go around and under other existing structures. I believe the thumb is more of a necessity than anything else here in colorado. regards,cd
when it would not work when they first got back to the to the mine ,the narrator said without the thrumb it can,t dig ,made me chuckle
No thumbs in south end qld but seen a few 4 in 1 gp buckets on 20 tonners. Also seen a few wheeled diggers. They are quiet popular here in SE QLD. Especially on highway jobs. There is always at least one or two on each highway project. They are mainly used for spreading topsoil and landscaping in areas where a tracked digger would just make a mess
The hyd thumb adds so much versitility to the machine, one second ure digging the nect lift out a boulder, i would never have an excavator with out one
the thumb adds so much to an excavator, it does however have one drawback. if you are digging ditch or loading spoils trucks it will cut the capacity of the bucket by some as it gets into the heaped bucket. other than that it makes an excavator whole as you can see from the photos. these are just playing around at the home site, when you get into a real clearing project there is nothing like a progressive link thumb such as this one
One of the excavators I was working with after Cyclone Yasi had a log grab and the teeth at the end went inside each other like putting your fingers from one hand inside your other hand, this meant he rarely needed a chainsaw to help, it was almost like a mulcher as well, he could break quite big logs up, he was able to get a lot of cubes of timber into the trucks.
Plenty of thumbs used by other contractors around here ( Central North Island ) but we don't have them . I have never operated a excavator with one and get by just fine . It's just another cost and puts extra weight out there when in our work we would hardly ever use it Not many wheeled excavator's here . We have looked at the idea but give up on them each time for various reasons
In australia the wheeled excavators are super expensive and honestly i cant see why you would want one well i cant see why you would fork out that much extra money unless you had a long term contract that required that machine.
Yeah, I noticed the same thing here in Oz. They seem very handy from what I have seen. I asked one of our contractors why he doesn't install a thumb on his machine after watching his operator struggling to load concrete rubble. His response was - "I have to many machines" ? I even offered to design him one... oh well, you can only lead a horse to water, etc. etc. My future excavator is definitely getting a thumb :thumbsup
Yair . . . thank's fellers, it's good to see so many quick reponses to a thread. Maybe with the thumb thing it's a case of you don't miss it if you never had it? If you built a thumb yourself I don't see it would be that expensive. For specialised applications such as mentioned by Bala and placing rock and all I would imagine it should be worth a dollar or two on the hourly rate . . . compared to a machine that didn't have one. Thanks and more pictures if you can. !!! Cheers.
I agree with JGS Parts , those wheeled things seem very expensive , when you look at them you would think they should be cheaper than a track machine .
Yair . . . as far as the wheeled excavators go. I don't know how "roadable" they are but for a general bush contractor working out of a country town it would save tieing up the float on some small jobs that need more dig than a backhoe . . . the customer would pay for the roading of course. Just saying. Cheers.
I have also looked at walking excavator but holy **** , the price of those is out of this world . Hourly rate would be so high you wouldn't get any work for it
Same
the wheeled excavators i have sold are only based in india and packistan sold one of 2 in china but i asked why they want them they say because of the infrastructer of there contrys it is easyer for them to move them then a tracked machine on a float also yeah i cant see why they are more expensive then a tracked model.
I think that tiny steering wheel adds to the cost a lot
I love having a thumb, on a utility type machine anyway. Not much use for one on a production digger, but on the 330 I can generally get $10.00 more per hour if it is on hourly hire, due to the added work it will do.
Yair . . . Jerry that's what I was alluding to . . . the money spent to fab/fit a thumb should yield a fair return on the investment. Cheers.
I know I'd never want to be without a thumb! Even if I'm just digging I'd still want my machine to have one in case you come across a big nugget, some roots, something somebody buried in the past, etc. A properly designed and installed thumb won't be in the way or take up any bucket capacity as it folds up flush against the boom and you'd hardly even know it's there... Sure, it weighs a few pounds but not that much. And they aren't all that expensive either as nowadays most machines come with an extra spool in the valve already anyhow... Here's some thumb pictures I have scattered on my computer...
Yair . . . thanks spitzair. That first picture with the thumb holding the big gooley is pretty convincing. Cheers.
in reagrds to the photo above with the big gooley. you could pick that big gooley up queit easily in the bucket without a thumb.
what would be the downsides of a thumb?
if you were able to dig a hole big enough for the gooley to sit in then yes you could pick it up but no need for a hole using a thumb
i could pick that up in bucket without a hole off flat ground without a thumb.
Yair . . . now its getting interesting C'mon excavatorr and robin yates (and any other digger ops.) anything I like to talk about is operating techniques . . . tell us more. Cheers
excavatorr, please tell us all how you can pick up a much bigger rock off the flat without using a thumb(and without using a track to help you )
when finding buried services, some advise the flat bucket method, but I never used this way, I always opened the bucket and bumped the bucket through the dig.If you touch an obstruction, could be a stone or a cable, the teeth are not in a dig mode so after the "bump" the banksman can see just what you touched.He exposes the bump and if it is the cable, then teeth into dig mode the safe side of the cable thus allowing him somewhere to throw muck.I used this method for many years and it worked for me very well
Good morning excavatorr , The 2 main reasons I don't like thumbs is set up like you see above is that you have two rams pressurising against each other . If you crowd that bucket around enough it will force that thumb back in , that can't be good for hydraulic system .The other is with long objects , like a big log , you have a lot of twist on the dipper arm . If you have a carefull operator this might be alright but can do a lot of damage if some **** wit gets on the machine . Haddy
I recently saw an excavator with a fixed "thumb" loading large stumps with root balls. The operator would dig them out and lay them over and then attach the arm with two heavy pins (only took a minute) to load . Seemed to work well.
Yes I would pick up using the track to assist me.
I built a fixed thumb for my backhoe out of some 1 1/8" plate laying around. Handiest thing ever for my needs here on the farm. It folds up out of the way when not needed.
Yes, but Lordy, those pinned thumbs sure to clang and bang like b'Jesus when not in use. Pretty handy when you need it, though, like you say.
Bluetop, It's actually not too bad, but I have to confess, the rest of the hoe is pretty loose so kind of hard to sort one noise out from the other!
Every one of the aftermarket pin on type thumbs I have been around are noisy, except for Cat thumbs. I had 2 315's and a 325 with a Cat thumb and although heavy, they were tight and quiet.
We have a pin on thumb and it makes a ton of noise when digging rock. But for the small investment (about 1500) it doesn't take long to pay off. Not as quick to get working as a hydrolic thumb but when you have a few trees or larger rocks it makes your life alot easier. I've been told and yelled at to never use the tracks to assist in loading the bucket. If thats what you do and it's ok for you thats fine but I won't do it.
Most hydro thumbs are setup with a lower relief psi, so when you crowd the the thumb with the bucket, it will push the thumb around.
I agree totally about not using the track to assist loading the bucket.I already suggested to the track assist poster you need to dig a hole so as to get underneath the big rock. When I had my own machines any operator who abused the equipment got one warning
If I have something to pick up with a track hoe and it won't go in the bucket, I just dig a hole for a backstop if it's possible, then fill the hole back in. Most things will go in the bucket while crowding with the jib boom while swinging. That's the way it done around here without thumbs. I realize some of you guys may have to get a hole permit from the Ministry of Anal Retentiveness or some such government entity first, in which case a thumb would be invaluable.
I think all the downsides have been covered by others, cost, weight, potential to damage machine, noise, etc I have a mechanical, home-made thumb on my little ex's, which are easily removable due to the size. They are a fantastic thing in some circumstances, for instance breaking up old concrete, if I can park my truck next to the job I can break the concrete into sizeable chunks and then use the thumb to grab them and lift them into the truck, this would be impossible to do without a thumb because as the arm lifts up the geometry of the bucket changes and there is 99.99% chance the slab of concrete will slip off the bucket, damage the truck, ex, me or all of the above. I have seen a number of demolition excavators fitted with thumbs.
Hello everyone, I live in QLD and there aren't very many thumbs (I have to get out of the car and take a good, long look when I do find one) on excavators. That said, there are a bizzilion of those grabs that have a fixed arm and you curl the front of it into the back (see attached picture). I did see a Kobelco SK210 with a hydraulic thumb that was placing sandstone into a wall- spoke to the operator and he said that it was worth the money he put into attaching it, he uses it for a lot of different things and if it is in the way he can pull out the pins fairly easily and just take it off. Wheeled Excavators- I have seen a few on the highway jobs, but not many. They appear to be used in landscaping and sort of like a runner around the site to lift trees, dig a small hole there, a small hole here etc. Also to spread dirt and sort rocks that kind of thing.
Wheeled excavators used to be reasonably common here in Perth. Gregorys used to have a fleet of Poclains and B and J Breakers had some as well. Thumbs on diggers are not common but I seen one the other day doing a demolition job near me. In Melbourne I operated track loaders with 4 in 1 buckets. The mob I worked for had one old Furakawa wheel loader and the rest tracked. Here in Perth because of the sand the only Traxcavators are used for scrub clearing.Its all wheel loaders doing the digging here.
Perhaps make up a rubber stop for the thumb to sit against when folded away?