Light Duty Grapple

[RonMar]

Been working on this for a week or so off and on(been thinking about it a lot longer) and finaly got it mounted onto the fork bucket to play with today. As you can see it is light duty, made from 3/16 wall pipe with a 2"X3/4" solid core running most of the straight length of the pipe. The pipe(and most everything else) was some scrap I had laying around and bent with a cheepie 12 ton harbor freight pipe bender. The open distance between forks and grapple tips is about 39".

I built this fork bucket about 2 years ago and it has been a real big help in cleaning up the mess I call my property. The biggest frustration with using it however has been keeping the pile of stuff on the forks. A lot of the time as I back away from where I just lifted a full load, a small root or vine or a stray branch will unload half of what I just scooped and picked. Or while on the way to the pile a dragging branch will hang up and unload the bucket halfway there. I don't need a grapple to rip boulders out of the ground so This should work fine for what I need it for while not taking away from my lift capacity too much. Each grapple arms has it's own cylinder and both are plummed in parallel so that it will clamp down on uneven loads like a stump root wad.

I replaced the 2 spool prince valve I had on the loader with a 3 spool to power the grapple via 1/4" lines with QC's out on the bucket. This third circuit via the same hoses will also be available to power other things such as a small cement mixer out in the FEL bucket that I plan on building later this summer. I went the whole valve route vis a switchable diverter as the original 2 spool didn't have float so I bought the 3 spool with this option.

 

[kennyd]

Nice Job!

 

[3RRL]

Ron,
You never cease to amaze me with your "out of the box" thinking. Your light weight grapple is very cool and looks to be a specialty grapple of sorts. In order to make it so stuff doesn't fall out as easily, have you considered adding a couple bars or tubes about 6" to each side of the individual bars? Sort of like how a table fork looks. It might help?

Heck, you might consider doubling up and adding another grapple tube about 6" apart to each individual jaw... so 4 total/ 2 per cylinder. Connect them for stability and pivot from the center between them. Looks like the tubes are lightweight enough that it wouldn't add too much weigh that way.

 

[blacksmith]

Very nice job on the grapple. I want to build myself a grapple for my new loader I built. Could you take a picture of the rear of the grapple so I could see how you have the cylinders atached. What stroke are you using with the cylinders?

 

[RonMar]

Thanks Kenny.

Rob
I thought of adding an additional tube strut to a pivot out near the outside edge of the bucket making a triangular shaped arm with a single curved tip to add some ability to better withstand side bending loads. After I use it a bit I may still do this if I note any deformity. The arms go in between bucket forks when fully closed so they should get some support at least when closed. The arms were the inexpensive part being built from scrap I had and not too difficult to fabricate although the 12 ton bender was at it's limit forming this 2" X 3/16 wall pipe.

Blacksmith
Pic attached as requested. The cylinders are standard 2X6 tie-rod cylinders from Surplus Center, about $47 each. I would have liked to find welded crosstube 2X6's at a reasonable price as they are shorter from pin to pin and I could have put the cylinder body more up inside the rear structure of the bucket and not place it as low as I did. I wanted to try and keep the pivot points for the arms as low to the top of the bucket as possible, but with this short bucket back and a 16 1/4" center to center closed length on the cylinder, I had to set the bottom of the cylinder right down to the ground. The bottom pins are thru thick wall 1 X 2 box and the bottom frame is gussetted(behind cylinder) with a triangle of 2X4X3/16 box tube which forms 2 gussetts side by side. Since the hydraulics are fed off to the left side, the left opens and closes before the right does. At my pump flow, about 2 seconds per grapple arm or 4 seconds total from both arms full open to both arms fully closed.

 

[Ryan03]

Nice job on the grapple. I like how you built it mostly out of stuff you had laying around. It is astonishing how much faster land clearing and debris removal goes when you have a grapple on your loader