The mini excavator (or all excavators) of today has become an increasingly versatile machine with the advent of a wide array of buckets and attachments suitable for an ever increasing line-up of tasks.
In this post we examine some of these attachments and the equipment they are most suited to, and the tasks they can be used to complete.
An overall list (which is growing by the day) includes:
- Digging Bucket
- Grading Bucket (also called Ditching Bucket or Dyking Bucket)
- Rock Bucket
- Trenching Bucket (also called Micro Trenching or Deep Dig Bucket)
- V-bucket / Trapezoidal Drainage Bucket
- Riddle Bucket
- Rake-Riddle Bucket
- Tilt-Ditching Bucket
- Land Rake
- Ripper Tooth
- Tilt-rotator
- Thumb - Mechanical
- Thumb - Hydraulic
- Log Grab / Grapple
- Hydraulic Breaker
- Pallet Forks
- Hedge Cutters (yes they really do exist!)
- Compaction Wheel - Mechanical
- Compactor - Hydraulic
- Auger / Post Hole Borer
For the rest of this blog we take a deep dive into some of these attachments in more detail.
Excavator bucket Types
Probably the first place to start is with the different types of excavator bucket available.
Digging Buckets
Traditionally an excavator (or a backhoe for that matter) were equipped with various sizes of digging bucket and a grading bucket.
Digging buckets were traditionally fitted with teeth, as they were used for trenching and bulk earth moving.
Digging buckets are now increasingly starting to be fitted with blades (either welded on or bolted on) especially in the UK market, as Health and Safety advisers recommend this to lower than chance of a service strike.
Grading Buckets (also called Ditching or Dyking Buckets)
Grading buckets have a straight edge for leveling work (grading) or ditching. They are also typically a lot wider than a digging bucket, and as a result as a shallower profile to prevent overloading the excavator.
Rock Buckets
Rock buckets are a heavy duty bucket for aggressive and high abrasion applications. Typically a rock bucket will have heavier duty bucket teeth, and additional wear protection to the body of the bucket to stop it wearing out so fast.
The Rhinox range of buckets to suit 9 ton to 25 ton excavators are already very heavy duty buckets, coming as standard with CAT Style bucket teeth hardened to 550HB (Hardness Brinell), and additional weld-in, hardened sidecutters and wear straps.
Trenching Bucket
Trenching buckets (also known as Micro Trenching Buckets or Deep Dig Buckets) are designed to dig a very small trench for installing electricity cables, water pipes or fibre optic broadband cables with minimum disruption to the ground, and very small reinstatement cost and time.
V-Bucket / Trapezoidal Drainage Bucket
V-buckets as the name suggests are a specially designed bucket shaped like a ‘V’ for digging ditches/trenches to a specific shape.
Some uses for these are for drainage ditches or dykes, as the ditch is formed in one pass saving time.
Another more specific use is on power line and pipeline projects, especially where a cable has to be encased in CBS (Concrete Bonded Sand). Because the CBS is very expensive, the trench has to be formed to a specific size, which is where the V-bucket comes in.
Another advantage is that engineers can survey the ground and the V-bucket can be built to specific sizes to remove the need for ground shoring which is a huge saving on a long cable laying job.
Riddle Buckets
A riddle bucket is a bucket with holes or times in its rear shell which allows aggregate to be sorted on site, and reduces the need for expensive muck away.
Rake-Riddle Buckets
As the name suggests, a rake riddle bucket is a combination of a riddle bucket and a land rake. The primary difference is that that the times are shaped like a bucket, but it doesn’t have sides or a lip plate like a riddle bucket does. This allows the user to rake ground and then riddle out material in one operation.
Tilt-Ditching Bucket
A tilt ditching bucket is a ditching bucket that is fitted with a hydraulic tilting mechanism which allows the bucket to swivel through 45 degrees either left or right. This allows the machine operator to produce more complex banks etc without having to move the machine so often increasing efficiency.
This type of bucket is especially useful for applications such as golf courses.
Excavator attachments
In addition to the various types of buckets available for excavators, there is also in increasing number of attachments available. These can be either mechanical or hydraulic. We list out some of the popular ones we offer, together with some more unusual ones that are appearing on the market:
Ripper Tooth
A ripper tooth is probably one of the most basic attachments we supply. Put simply it is a steel shank fitted with a heavy duty tooth where it engages with the ground, and a set of hangers at the top to mount it to the digger.
Ripper Teeth are generally used to break up hard ground, and are also handy for digging out tree roots etc.
Land Rake
As its name suggests is a rake attachment for an excavator. Rhinox Land Rakes are made with heavy duty tines for maximum wear resistance, and are great for land clearance jobs.
What digger buckets or attachments to I need?
So you are probably asking yourself what bucket or attachment do I need? Well firstly consider the type of work you are doing, and look for attachments that will make you more efficient, and also reduce risks.
Our team here at Rhinox have over 20 years of experience in this market, with many of our employees having operated excavators at some point in their careers, so they are well placed to discuss with you to find the best solution to your requirements.
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