Need help with a hooper for tractor bucket

[roermo]

Hi all, need some help: I am in Hannibal Mo, and as with many folks in the Midwest we are facing rising rivers. Here in Hannibal along the Mississippi River we have a flood wall that will turn back 31.2 or so. Back in 1993 our levee was bran new and the city and many folks worked 2 weeks straight bagging sand to put on top of the levee. It is looking like a repeat +.. Well 13 years later I am not sure I can put in that type of hard work.

I was thinking about my tractor and bucket could be put into use. On TV I have seen little clips of a tractor dumping sand into some kind of hopper then some how they load into bags.

Does any one here have plans or know how to build something that would hold a bucket of sand, then some how dump a measured amount for the bags. I have 4 foot bucket on a smaller tractor but this would be better than hand shoveling into bags. I thought I could strap on something to fill the bucket so it would only hold a couple of bags full of snad then dump in a hopper but thats a lot or repeat travel. So in closing is there a hopper design that will hold a 4 foot bucket of sand and then some how dispence it to the bags.

Any ideas.

[MReeb]

The hopper could be just a standard grain hopper or even an old gravity box.
To meter out the sand at the same amount everytime would be a bit trickier.
One way to meter out the sand would be to mount a tube off of the bottom of the hopper. The tube would have to gates on it, one above the other. The gates would be set far enough apart to allow a certain amount of sand to be trapped between them. Start with both gates closed. Open the top gate allowing the sand to fill the tube. Close the top gate. Put the bag under the tube and open the bottom gate. Close the bottom gate and repeat the process. If you wanted to automate the thing you could add two pnuematic or hydraulic cylinders to the gates and 4 switches to know what the gate positions are. Add a couple relays and a pushbutton or selector switch and one guy could operate it while changing the bag. To hold the bag use a couple weighted arms and just slip the bag over the tube and under the weighted arms. The arms will need to be heavy enough to hold the bag with the sudden drop of sand.

[WVBill]

Just Googled "Sand Hopper" and came up with the following:

SANDHOPPER the Lightweight Manual Sandbagging Device Increasing Productivity Dramatically

Sand hopper for filling bags - Patent 5894871

The SandHopper - Sandbag Filling Machine

Maybe you could make up something like these.

WVBill

[chumly2071]

I like the gravity wagon or cone hopper idea as mentioned above, with the use of the lower gate valve compartment. I would recommend adding some sort of tank vibrator to the side panel to help remove any bridging that might occur internally in the tank.