If you decide to do it, I will help if I can with my experience from this project.
As for the pins...try to put some high quality steel, that could help
It's great to see it coming together. There have been some epic build threads here on TBN but I think yours pretty much blows them all away. The closest one was probably a guy about 10 years ago who built an entire skidsteer loader from scratch.
If you decide to do it, I will help if I can with my experience from this project.
As for the pins...try to put some high quality steel, that could help
Because of the dipper is made of 3"x3" square tubing the joint is only3" wide. The dipper is about 3ft long. The pin is 1" diameter. Therefore if the lateral force on the dipper is 100lb the shearing force on the pin is about 2400lb. The bushing in the dipper also might be worn out making the issue worse. I will cut out all the bushings and replace them with larger in example 1.5" diameter. I might also make the joint wider to decrease the shearing force.
If I can mahe a suggestion, try to use 420 stainless steel for your pins. You can free machine it in the annealed condition and then have it quenched and tempered at 200C (400F). This will give you nice hard pins that aren't too brittle. An alternative is 8620 carburized HRC 60 to 0.060" deep but the 420 pins will work out better.
the pins are in shear, the bushings are loaded in compression.
your shear stress is .577 X radial load (lbs) / pin cross sectional area (square inches)
you want the yield strength of whatever your pins are made from to be atleast 2 - 5 times greater than this. Because it is subject to repetitive loading (fatigue) it should be 10X or more.