How to dig gravel out of hillside

[DJ54]

A few hundred hours of seat time, and that boom, stick, and bucket will be like an extension of your arm, and hand. Doing several functions at once will smooth out the operation, and become one fluid motion. Most important is to get the machine stable, so you're not rocking. In loose material, you can kinda' scoonch the tracks back and forth, to get the machine settled down, or grab a partial bucket, and throw under a track in a low spot, that causes you to rock. Forward/reverse the tracks in place, to get it to settle down. I'd just do a short drop of the boom, to make sure it wasn't rocking, and you're good to go.

Always a good idea to grease every day. On the Kobelco, I'd grease the slew ring a couple times a week. It gets to be second nature to be looking around at the surrounding area for leaks, wear points, etc. Just doing that may save you a lot of time, and money down the road.

Getting your bench set up to load only making a 90º turn, or less, instead of a 180º turn will save a lot of time, fuel, and wear too.

 

[scottshci]

Your best production will be with the excavator on top of material and the truck lower. It may take a while to set your pit up properly you don't want to be too much higher than the truck and you need to be able to easily reach the center of the truck. Swinging across the tail gate of the truck is ideal but you can swing over the side if the situation requires it. NEVER swing over the cab. Make sure the machine is stable don't under cut yourself. Clean the floor and the toe between trucks to minimize tire cuts and damage. I think some one already mentioned to be efficient you want to keep your swing close to 90 degrees.

 

[dscearce]

We only used loaders to mine gravel borrow at the pits I worked at for my last employer. Excavators and draglines were used to mine below the water table. Decide what level your pit floor is going to be and start taking the gravel across the bank left to right or right to left. whatever suits you. We basically ran into the bank, then lifted and curled the bucket while applying a good amount of forward push to the wheels and trying not to spin the wheels, sometimes it was easy, sometimes not so much. A toothed bucket or even a spade toothed bucked helps with hard banks, If we did dig with the wheels, we repaired our boo-boo so the next guy didn't have to fight the divots. They used a bulldozer to skin the topsoil off before we started digging out of the bank. Banks were limited to about 20' high for safety.

Being in the quarry industry for 30 years I’ve used excavators for everything from stripping overburden to production load out in the pit! Excavators are the most universal piece of equipment you can have on a mine site ya just need the experience to go with it.

 

[3 Horse Ranch]

Being in the quarry industry for 30 years I’ve used excavators for everything from stripping overburden to production load out in the pit! Excavators are the most universal piece of equipment you can have on a mine site ya just need the experience to go with it.

The quarries used excavators, but the gravel pits used wheel loaders as in many cases the drivers loaded themselves, either from stockpiles of dredged material or from a natural gravel bank. In most cases we were loading natural glacial till deposits left over from the ice ages. Quarries and gravel pits are very different operations. The company I worked for owned 2 quarries and a half dozen pits there was no confusing the operations.

 

[kpsp50]

I'm with bmaverick Dynamite

 

[kpsp50]

You will ruin your machine if you don't use it