Heavy Duty Mechanical Grapple on little tractor

[perkins78]

This is a great idea. Would love to see a video of it in action.

 

[fxrupr]

One question at time.
Ovrszd
If I could figure out how to put an AutoCAD drawing on this website I'd show you the geometry. Since I'm the one working with the thing I have a hard time getting pictures of it doing work.
Mendonsy
1. The orange version probably weighs close to 200 lbs., The yellow one started at 37, made out of 1 ｽ x 3 steel tubing. Like I said it needs a redesign based on moments of inertial and loading. Up till now I was just seeing where it would bend next. The weak link now is actually the Kubota bucket. I have bent the cutting edge repeatedly grabbing large chucks of log. I welded half inch steel gussets onto the sides of the bucket to take the stress at the hinge points.
2. The dimensions are based on where you attach the pusher arms to your loader arms. Then decide where to put your main pivot points. Envision the trapezoid formed by the bucket hinge, the top of the bucket and where you are attaching to the loader arms. The fourth side of the trapezoid is the grapple lever arm. I spent quite a bit of time drawing circles after I had reverse engineered the bucket to get the teeth to swing inside the bucket to the correct degree.


Herringchoker
You can use the general idea. Since every loader is a little different you will have to work out the geometry to use on your machine. Measure your components carefully and draw it out. I built several mockups out of cardboard and then quarter inch plywood to see what was going to work. Then there was the destructive testing!

BCP
The idea is the same, use the roll of the bucket to grab stuff.

View attachment grappletransferdoc.pdf

 

[Mendonsy]

Thanks for the information!!! I like your moving circles idea. That makes it a lot easier to figure out where the pivot points need to be!!

 

[herringchoker]

Thanks fixrupr. That's how I was thinking of going at it - circle drawings (the old geezer way with pencil on paper) and cardboard mockups.

 

[fxrupr]

I appreciate all the good reviews. I do have an old copy of AUTOCAD on the PC and it makes doing pivot points a whole lot easier, but you still need to start cutting and welding to make it go. Some of what I will pass along may be useful. I used 3/4 inch grade 8 bolts for the main pivots at the top of the bucket. The pusher arms are just 1" steel pipe out of the scrap pile. I fabricated the pivot bushings where it comes off the cross tube on the loader arms out of various sizes of pipe big enough to make a pretty snug fit into the cross tube. The 1" pipe has gotten bent over time but it's easy to straighten out or make a new one if required. I did eventually put some bulldog teeth on the lip of the bucket to help grab bigger slippery logs. It's tough on the bucket cylinders because you are pulling with them instead of pushing. Mine are in need of rebuilding again. It blows the seals on them.

It's never going to be made commercially because they can't sell you any expensive hydraulic controls to go with it. If you think about it it's a whole lot like the thumb attachment on a backhoe. I did a 2 day cleanup job on a neighbor's ranch with it last spring. They had cleared a bunch of land and tried to burn wet trees and stumps loaded with mud. We went back in with the little Kubota with the grapple and a little John Deere with a rock bucket. After cutting a bunch of the unburned trees into small enough pieces by hand with a chainsaw I was able to pile all the cut material with the grapple into burn piles which would actually burn. Once I got the big stuff carried out of the way, I would back rake with the teeth and grab all the unburned debris buried in the mud and ashes. After piling this stuff up by back dragging with the teeth I would turn around and push with the bucket to make bigger piles. The John Deere with the rock bucket could then pick a lot of it up and shake out the dirt and rocks and dump all that small stuff on the burn piles. This was in Abbot Texas, Willie's home town. We didn't see one rattlesnake. I did get into a wild bees nest in some old tractor tires but luckily was not stung.

Its hedoubleL on small trees too if you need to clear overgrown pasture. I grab a 6 inch log say 10 feet long and just bulldoze the saplings. The weight of the log helps push stuff down. Once the heavy stuff was pushed over we have another tractor with a shredder which further chewed stuff up. The box blade on the back works great for clearing briars and small vegetation but watch out for those stumps.
I added a couple more pictures. A couple pictures are of carrying the remains of one my renter's cows. She hadn't been doing well and the heat this summer probably did her in. After the vultures, varmints, insects and coyotes are done there isn't much left but bones, sinews and a stinky hide. Unfortunately I was down wind of the remains all the way down to where I buried her. There are a couple more pictures of a connection or two on the grapple. Then there are a couple of cleaning up after knocking down lots of blood weed also known as giant ragweed. Looks a lot like that other weed.
What I like about the grapple on the bucket is that I can loosen dirt with the grapple and still load using the bucket. The grapple blocks some materials when it's closed but if I plan to do a lot of digging I take the grapple off.

 

[oosik]

Nice looking implement. A few of your pics make it look like you live in a jungle - a whole lot of undergrowth.

Of course anything green looks good to me. Around here - things turn tan( dead ) around mid June and won't begin to green back up until about this time of year.

 

[fxrupr]

Our land is just north of Waco Texas. The giant ragweed grows prolifically in the spring after spring floods in my bottom pasture land near the Brazos River. As soon as it starts to get hot in late May right when the field corn is either burnt to a crisp or just getting chopped depending on heat and rainfall the weeds are about 10 feet tall and shade everything else out. It kills all the grasses trying to get established because of the shade. I will take the box blade running in reverse or the bucket running just at ground level and it pulls the weeds up by the roots. After I get big enough piles I dump them in piles to rot. Makes good compost. The cows will eat the young plants when they are still tender. Trick is getting them on the ground at the right time. Once that stuff gets over 4 feet tall cows won't touch it unless they are starving which we try to avoid.

 

[fxrupr]

Our land is just north of Waco Texas. The giant ragweed grows prolifically in the spring after spring floods in my bottom pasture land near the Brazos River. As soon as it starts to get hot in late May right when the field corn is either burnt to a crisp or just getting chopped depending on heat and rainfall the weeds are about 10 feet tall and shade everything else out. It kills all the grasses trying to get established because of the shade. I will take the box blade running in reverse or the bucket running just at ground level and it pulls the weeds up by the roots. After I get big enough piles I dump them in bigger piles to rot. Makes good compost. The cows will eat the young plants when they are still tender. Trick is getting them on the ground at the right time. Once that stuff gets over 4 feet tall cows won't touch it unless they are starving which we try to avoid.

 

[fxrupr]

glitch dbl glitch sorry

 

[stuckmotor]

fxrupr,
Good job! You've been using your brain. Why can't I ever do that?