Panzers: I break rocks thread

[ThePanzerFuhrer]

Got time this morning to get that shaft built up. I really like using that rototec spray torch. Makes projects like this super easy to do.

First end build up.

That end finished machined and polished.

second end all ready for the spray. I shot blast the section that gets the build up so the spray sticks good. I polish the sections I don’t want the spray to stick to. It just flakes off when I get close to size. You have to machine this stuff slow like 100 rpm max depth of .01 and a feed of .0015 per rev. It takes longer to get it to size than to prep and put the spray down. it takes me maybe a hour a repair if I have everything dragged out and no one bothers me.

all welded up.

This shaft all done. Now I just need to get the input shaft done and I’ll be able to get this box back together and on to the next issue.

 

[ThePanzerFuhrer]

So I got the gearbox all reassembled and the auxiliary seal kit installed. The auxiliary seal kits improves the seal life by 20x. All it is, is a ring that goes around the taper flange. It has some grease fittings on it to pump grease between the seal and flange. This grease keeps all the dust and dirt away from the seal. It’s stupid and they charge 300 bucks for the 3 rings but it works.

It’s getting warm out!!! The county tossed the weight limits up on Monday so I have lots of help in the shop. Working on lots of projects.

My 980f needs the steering cylinders resealed. I need to change up the motor mount on the feeder motor on one of the breakers. We got the lip assembly all done and ready to get welded on the bucket. Will have a bunch of pictures in a few days.

Both Concrete guys placed their order for stone this week. Looked at a few projects for the portable asphalt plants. Should be a good year if I can get it all done.

 

[CarterKraft]

Spent a hour or so disassembling the hammer. I found out what my issue is ;( . When I broke a tie rod bolt it allowed the stack to get crooked. The piston grazed the seal head and roughed up the sealing surface. I got a price on a new piston and seal head. Piston is 5500 and seal head is 700 and 4-6 weeks out because they make them to order.

Soooooo I really don’t want to spend that much cash right now. I’m gonna some how get it on one of the lathes and polish the bad areas up. I think I can get it good enough to run for most of the year until I can order the parts last this summer. I didn’t take enough pictures. I’ll get some more tomorrow.

Here it is out of the body. The picture is deceiving. It’s 4.5 feet tall and 14” square. She is a pretty big chunk of iron.


The top block is the braking accumulator. The top block get charged to 2-300 psi. It’s job is to slow the pistons upward movement down. This is my problem. This accumulator is losing its charge.

This accumulator is different in that there is no bladder. It just seals on the piston assembly. This sealing surface is what got scored when the tie rod bolt broke.



This is the only moving part in the hammer. It’s amazing the hydraulics can move this guy up and down 6” at 200+ times a minute. It must weigh 2-300 lbs.

The gas seals are in the seal head that hanging on top of the piston.


you can kinda see the scoring in the above picture. I think I can get 95% of the scoring out with some polishing on the lathe.



The body is where the moneys at. That’s gotta be a fun part to machine. It doesn’t look like anything got damaged in this part. I enjoy doing stuff like this learning how it all works.

Is that a NPK clone?

 

[ThePanzerFuhrer]

Is that a NPK clone?

It’s a Stanley Mbx308. It is not to well known but the nail hammer guys make big hydraulic hammers as well. They are based out of Milwaukee Oregon. It kinda sounds like they design them and job out most of the manufacturing.

Been a decent hammer so far. I’ll be in to it for about 3200 in repairs. That’s the rechroming seal kit and a tie rod bolt. I can live with that. I’ll put it in operation with my uncle the farmer. If he can’t fuck it up I did a good job fixing it.

It’s funny you asked that. I picked up the piston from the machine shop today. Fucker looks beautiful. The boys at the plating company did a excellent job.

Tomorrow I’ll reassemble it hopefully not wrecking any seals. I’m just nervous about one plastic seal and two of the sintered bronze ones. I’m gonna heat them up in a bucket of oil to help soften them up to get them in. I’m gonna get my education lol.

 

[ThePanzerFuhrer]

Spent this afternoon reassembling the hammer. Went way better than I envisioned. I didn’t even fuck any of the new seals up.

The main body only gets three lip seals at the moil end. The piston gets dropped in next. The seal head is where all the action is. It has one lip seal 2 sintered bronze type rings and a tight plastic ring. I ended up cooking the bronze and plastic ring in a sauce pan of hyd oil on a turkey frier. It quickly got the seals up to 250 degrees so they were a little more pliable.

I had to go and clean up all the grooves in the seal head before installing the seals. When the piston crashed into it, the lands got their edges rolled over. I needed to use a cutoff wheel to knock this edge off. This piece is extremely hard, my deburring tool just skated off of it.

The hot seals made them pretty easy to get in the grooves. I just had to triple check to make sure they were orientated correctly.

Once the seal head was resealed it got dropped on the piston.

Lastly the accumulator was set on the top of the stack. All that I have left on this is to torque the big nuts to 2200 foot lbs. I’m kind excited to see how she runs.

The threads are really neat on these tie rod bolds. It’s a rope thread with a taper towards the center. I think they do that so there are certain places the tie rods break so you don’t get fucked. If these things broke in the wrong spot it would be tough to get them out to replace.

 

[ThePanzerFuhrer]

I also got the steering cylinders resealed on the 980f. This machine has to one of the best or arguably be called one of the best loaders to be ever built. It was the last mechanical engine mechanical trans loader to be built by cat. The frame and major components were designed to have a 100,000 hour life span.

The steering cylinder pins are a tapered fit in the frame. You need to press them out with a porta power. There is zero chance of these pins wobbling out the loader frame.

Another interesting feature this machine has is the lower bucket pins are oil filled an do not need lubing. The first set of these pins went 16,500 hour before needing to get replaced. That’s crazy for the abuse it gets being a feed loader.

Here she is in all her glory, kinda ugly but she gets the job done!

So once we pulled the cylinders out I used my poor mans hydraulic bench to pull them apart to reseal. This bench consisted of the hitch on my pos pickup and a forklift to pull them apart. Worked pretty slick.

This guy was really easy to reseal. A 1” impact took the piston bolt out no problem. Here is a seal twister in action. A seal twister is required for getting these stiff fat seals back in their lands.

It’s hard to believe but this does not hurt the seals. Once everything was sealed I torqued the glands back one with my home made spanner.

This is a pretty straight forward job. Hopefully these seals should last another 22,000+ hours.

 

[subybaja]

You know, for as much as this thread makes me feel like PewPew, I sure enjoy it!

"So before lunch today, I disassembled my 1500lb hydraulic rock hammer, spray-welded the sealing surface in the lathe, and tossed it back together. NBD. Later, if I'm feeling pretty, I might rebuild the sharp end of an earthmover."

Thanks!

 

[[486]]

had to google rope thread

most of what I found was disappointing, people doing crazy expensive looking CNC stuff instead of hand grinding form tools
nobody had a better answer for "why" than "it's easier to clean dirt off them"

 

[bdkw1]

;n340410]hand grinding form tools

Nobody does that anymore if the want something repeatable. We wire EDM HSS tools all the time though for special projects.

 

[lt1yj]

Spent this afternoon reassembling the hammer. Went way better than I envisioned. I didn’t even fuck any of the new seals up.

The main body only gets three lip seals at the moil end. The piston gets dropped in next. The seal head is where all the action is. It has one lip seal 2 sintered bronze type rings and a tight plastic ring. I ended up cooking the bronze and plastic ring in a sauce pan of hyd oil on a turkey frier. It quickly got the seals up to 250 degrees so they were a little more pliable.

I had to go and clean up all the grooves in the seal head before installing the seals. When the piston crashed into it, the lands got their edges rolled over. I needed to use a cutoff wheel to knock this edge off. This piece is extremely hard, my deburring tool just skated off of it.

The hot seals made them pretty easy to get in the grooves. I just had to triple check to make sure they were orientated correctly.

Once the seal head was resealed it got dropped on the piston.




Lastly the accumulator was set on the top of the stack. All that I have left on this is to torque the big nuts to 2200 foot lbs. I’m kind excited to see how she runs.



The threads are really neat on these tie rod bolds. It’s a rope thread with a taper towards the center. I think they do that so there are certain places the tie rods break so you don’t get fucked. If these things broke in the wrong spot it would be tough to get them out to replace.

You should replace all 4 tie rod bolts and retorque them at least once in the first 10 hours and again at 50-100 hours of use. For that matter you should check them regularly as well as top head pressure. The tie rod bolts see high cyclic stress and are prone to cumulative fatigue failures. If you reuse the bolts you're asking for a bolt failure.

 

[ThePanzerFuhrer]

;n340410]had to google rope thread

most of what I found was disappointing, people doing crazy expensive looking CNC stuff instead of hand grinding form tools
nobody had a better answer for "why" than "it's easier to clean dirt off them"

Rope thread is a awesome thread form for people like me who live in the dirt. I use it exclusively for the take ups on my conveyors. I like it so much I stock it in 3/4 1”and 1 1/4”. It’s sad when I go to order it at Fastenal I need to teach the new guys that work there what it is and yes you sell it lol.

Rope or coil rod advantages are it’s a quick thread pitch compared to the same size unified course. The male and female threads have a large gap between the roots of the threads. This allows the nuts to be turned with ease while packed full of dirt and rust. This is the reason I love it. No issues adjusting a tail pulley after it gets packed full of dirt and sits for a year or two.

Most other thread forms get seized up in these spots. It’s not as strong as a thread as a unified or acme so you must oversize the thread in certain applications.

As for making this thread via single point on the lathe I have never tried it. I don’t have any taps so on the converse never had to do any threading either. I just stock the stuff in 8’ lengths and have a bin full of nuts.

 

[ThePanzerFuhrer]

You should replace all 4 tie rod bolts and retorque them at least once in the first 10 hours and again at 50-100 hours of use. For that matter you should check them regularly as well as top head pressure. The tie rod bolts see high cyclic stress and are prone to cumulative fatigue failures. If you reuse the bolts you're asking for a bolt failure.

Yeah these bolts are problematic. The bad part is they are hidden in the housing. There is only a 1” hole next to each one that you can stick a finger in to check if they are loose or not.

In order to check the torque you need to remove the excavator adapter plate. Of which is like 20 1” bolts and a 500 lb plate oriented in a awkward position. Maybe in the future I’ll revamp the adapter plate to put access holes in it above these bolts so I can tighten them without have to remove the plate.

I do my best to keep a eye one them. I have told my operators what to look for and what the signs of a loose bolt are. I think it’s too adavanced of a observation for most of them :(.

After you post I’m pobably gonna order 3 more bolts as I had one new one hand. I’ll save the other 3 for spares incase we break one and need it in a pinch.

 

[ThePanzerFuhrer]

You know, for as much as this thread makes me feel like PewPew, I sure enjoy it!

"So before lunch today, I disassembled my 1500lb hydraulic rock hammer, spray-welded the sealing surface in the lathe, and tossed it back together. NBD. Later, if I'm feeling pretty, I might rebuild the sharp end of an earthmover."



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Thanks!

Lol I’m no where near as good as the old timers. I have to be able to do all this out of a necessity. I have old equipment and cannot afford/do not want the new stuff. I also have my crushing crews in the garage helping me do this work. They take the gearbox off and dissemble I’ll spray weld and reassemble. They put it back on.

I just bounce around the shop doing all the sensitive/technical stuff they do all the brute force work.

I don’t always get everything right either ;(. I’ll get some pictures of yesterday’s fuckup. I improved a motor mount on a feeder of a breaker. Got it made and gave the boys the dimensions of where I thought it should go. Wellllllllllll, I wasn’t paying enough attention and didn’t do the do this look right test before it got completely welded down.

So we had to cut it off today and slide it a good 20” to make it work correctly. I got harassed by my dad over this screwup . I’ll get some pictures of that boondoggle tomorrow.

It’s always interesting in the shop in the winter time. The guys always love to see my new and interesting ways of fixing this old shit.

My sentences usually begin with I have always wanted to try this ......... lol.

Or we’ll we might as well try and fix it because we really can’t fuck it up anymore than it all ready is.

 

[ThePanzerFuhrer]

Been busy busy busy. We got a early start this year because of the dry winter and a warm spring.
Today the blasters loosened up another 30,000 ton of stone in the quarry. Turned out pretty decent. Still lots of oversized comming off the top and not getting broken in the blast. There is nothing we can really do about that until we get deeper in the pit.

when the driller was here I had him sink a few holes in the neighboring property we bought. He went down 56’ and it was hard the whole way.

We have been going hard and getting all the oversized from last year broken up into crusher sized pieces.

The shot loaded and rdy to go!

Now the work begins !! There is enough room to put the crusher in the hole and make the piles in the bottom. No more driving the rock up the stupid hill!

 

[ThePanzerFuhrer]

Lots of pictures I haven’t updated this thread in a while.

The bucket I bent the 5/8” thick ar400 plate, hard at work. Stripped off the road gravel and crushed it down to 1 1/4”dense base. What is left will be crushed down into 1 3/4” gravel to feed the wash plant.

We cracked the boom on my poor end of life hammer excavator. Good this I caught it when the crack was still on the side only. Way easier to fix vs letting to go across the top and bottom. I v’ed it out good and stitched her back together with 11018 rod verticle up. Didn’t turn out to bad IMO:). I don’t weld verticle up enough to be really good at it.

I didn’t plate it maybe the next time it’s in the garage. I needed it to go back hammering to get all the rock beat up before the blaster came and loosened up another round.

 

[ThePanzerFuhrer]

My brother goes and uses my mini loader for 20 mins. Comes back broken. Who would have thought.

Well I needed to make a new one. Started with a piece of 1” x 4.5 bar stock. Milled it down to .875”.

Heated it up and used my press to bend it to a 90degree angle. Then heated it up to cherry red and used my fireball vise to bend it to 180 degrees. I thought I would have broke the vise but she held up just fine. That vice is one of the best one of my builds !!!!

Not perfect but bending a piece of 7/8 by 4.5 180 degrees is a tough job.

Once the plate was bent I tossed it on the mill and punched a hole for the pin.

All ready to be welded back on the dog bone. She is back together and working great.

 

[Muckin_Slusher]

I’ll get some pictures of that boondoggle tomorrow.

boondoggle pics!

 

[bgaidan]

The bucket I bent the 5/8” thick ar400 plate, hard at work. Stripped off the road gravel and crushed it down to 1 1/4”dense base. What is left will be crushed down into 1 3/4” gravel to feed the wash plant.

Is that your native/overburden material?



Alos, pics of the vise?

 

[ThePanzerFuhrer]

More random picks.

Another excavator bucket rebuilt and ready to go.

Welding a new shank on my 115z4 loader. 10 yd bucket on this bad boy. Only took me 6 hours to fit and weld the shank on. That was with 1/16” dual shield wire also. I love dual shield it lays down so nice in the spray mode. It also gets really good penetration in that mode. That 6hrs also included cutting the shroud mounts off and moving them up to clear the new tooth.
The prior owner fucked up and weld the outside shank a inch in from the side plates. What this did was cause the adapter plate to crack right behind the tooth. I fitted the shank to be welded right to side plate. That way the side plate will help keep the shank from rebreaking the adapter plate.

A genset of mine was leaking 1/2 gallon of oil into its containment cell making a absolute mess.

So enough was enough. We put a new oil pan on and a new rear main seal. To deal with this I built a overhead trolley to pick the generator up and move it back to access the rear seal. The genset weighs over a 1000 pounds.

This worked slicker than shit. Got it apart in a short day and back together the next. It would have taken 2 days to remove and reinstall the cover. Didn’t even have to unhook any of the genset wires.

Got a few weeks on the genset since the fix and no oil in the containment.

The local auction got me. I had to buy a frost tooth that was there for that 9060b we put the quick coupler on. Went there with my pos pickup and went fuck that was bigger than I thought. I only had back roads to drive on to get home so I said fuckit and went with it.

 

[ThePanzerFuhrer]

Let

boondoggle pics!

So the guys that owned my old breaker converted it to electric from hydraulic. They got it so close. The put the 40hp feeder motor on a rubber pivot base. However they put the base flat with the world. This works but it has a hard time keeping the belt right when you toss 15 tons of gravel in the feeder. The belt gets lose the feeder slows and you lose productivity. I prolly lost 10,000 tons of production last last do to this. The problem is it just slows down a little and it hardly noticeable by the feed loader. So you just keep going and go wtf why did we only get this much made today.

so I wanted to mount the pivot base at a 30 degree angle so the weight of the motor helped pull the belts tight when you toss a big bucket of crap on the feeder and it moves down 5”.

I did this on my other breaker and it has been flawless since the install.

So I made a halfassed drawing of what I wanted and started going.

Fabbed up the mount.

Got it all welded in using my drawing. Well I trusted my drawing a little too much. I was off with one dimension . The belt I used on my other breaker was too short. Fuck fuck fuck. This is a triple banded c belt so it’s like 350 a pop. Fuck if I’m gonna have to get a different size and stock it.

So I cut it out and slid it back to make the belt I wanted to work.

This is the breaker. It’s underneath the feeder.

Here is the hell hole it is in. Me getting the mount attached the first time.

The feeder is awesome in that it has 20 h beams on the bottom of it to put a trolley on to lift the motor.

Moral of the story is trust but verify. We ended up cutting it out and sliding it to the correct location to make sure the correct belt can be used.

 

[aczlan]

More random picks.

Another excavator bucket rebuilt and ready to go.

Welding a new shank on my 115z4 loader. 10 yd bucket on this bad boy. Only took me 6 hours to fit and weld the shank on. That was with 1/16” dual shield wire also. I love dual shield it lays down so nice in the spray mode. It also gets really good penetration in that mode. That 6hrs also included cutting the shroud mounts off and moving them up to clear the new tooth.
The prior owner fucked up and weld the outside shank a inch in from the side plates. What this did was cause the adapter plate to crack right behind the tooth. I fitted the shank to be welded right to side plate. That way the side plate will help keep the shank from rebreaking the adapter plate.

A genset of mine was leaking 1/2 gallon of oil into its containment cell making a absolute mess.

So enough was enough. We put a new oil pan on and a new rear main seal. To deal with this I built a overhead trolley to pick the generator up and move it back to access the rear seal. The genset weighs over a 1000 pounds.

This worked slicker than shit. Got it apart in a short day and back together the next. It would have taken 2 days to remove and reinstall the cover. Didn’t even have to unhook any of the genset wires.

Got a few weeks on the genset since the fix and no oil in the containment.

The local auction got me. I had to buy a frost tooth that was there for that 9060b we put the quick coupler on. Went there with my pos pickup and went fuck that was bigger than I thought. I only had back roads to drive on to get home so I said fuckit and went with it.

If it fits, it ships :D

Aaron Z

 

[ThePanzerFuhrer]

Is that your native/overburden material?



Alos, pics of the vise?

Yeah we are extremely fortunate. The top 8 feet is a dirty gravel. You crush it with a good feeder man and the gravel will pass the state dot specs.

I’ll have to get pictures today of the vise.

 

[bgaidan]

Yeah we are extremely fortunate. The top 8 feet is a dirty gravel. You crush it with a good feeder man and the gravel will pass the state dot specs.

I’ll have to get pictures today of the vise.

When I worked in TX, south of Austin, there were pits that had overburden that met the DOT spec for flex base straight out of the ground.


The projects I'm working on now, that cobble is what we look for. I've paid $90+/ton for 4-6" river cobble and I usually have to truck from 2 or 3 states away.

 

[[486]]

where I'm digging in my yard it's pretty similar with clay/gravel mix from about 2' on down (haven't gone more than 8ft deep yet, no idea how far it goes)
only sucky bit is that it is all clay and 1-3" gravel with big rocks mixed in, nothing in between so I can't just toss it straight on the driveway

 

[ThePanzerFuhrer]

When I worked in TX, south of Austin, there were pits that had overburden that met the DOT spec for flex base straight out of the ground.


The projects I'm working on now, that cobble is what we look for. I've paid $90+/ton for 4-6" river cobble and I usually have to truck from 2 or 3 states away.

And here I am crushing it into 1 1/2” stone to get $12 a ton for it

once the quarry takes off I’ll scale back my crushing of the round stones. Until then the bills need to get paid ;(

 

[Thefishguy77]

I love this thread. You seem to be able to unfuck anything thrown at you.

 

[Arps]

You have some cool toys!

 

[ThePanzerFuhrer]

I love this thread. You seem to be able to unfuck anything thrown at you.

It is out of necessity. I like old junk so I need to be able to fix old junk. If I had to buy all new shit it would be like 15+ million to replace it all. No way could I swing that lol nor would I want too.

yesterday get a call the hammer isn’t working. Go oh fuck here we go again. Get there and it’s working fine. So I jump in and start using it to see what’s wrong.

I notice when your hammering the moil was starting to turn a little bit. I keep hammering and sure shit it stops. I smile because this is a easy fix.

I make the boys pull it off and bring it home. We start pounding on the moil retaining pin and we can’t get it to move. Luckily I had my recycle excavator at home to get the pin out for me.

A little hammer on hammer action! Sexy

As I expected this is what came out.

The moil retaining pin completely shattered. With the way it broke I need to replace it with a hardened pin so it will shatter not bend when a dry fire happens.
Good thing I keep a endless supply of junk around. Thank you local pin and bushing manufacturer. They put a few bins up for auction like 10 years ago. That thing has been a money maker.

Right on top sounds like a church bell when dropped and the right size to boot.

Did a little lathe work wrecked about 4 cermet tool edges cutting the hard as fuck rod in a wimpy lathe and bingo she is back working 3 hrs later.

My life in a nutshell. Work break fix work break fix lol. I enjoy the daily challenges and trying to fix it with what I have on hand.

 

[lt1yj]

Do you ever tig dress or grind the weld toe on those repairs? Either will double the fatigue life of the repair unless it unzips in the throat which just means you have an inclusion or lack of fusion.

The weld toe has a small crack at the toe from the molten weld quenching by the surrounding base material. Grinding the toe smooth and removing ~.5mm of material or tig dressing the toe to locally remelt the toe and create a small toe radius will eliminate the small crack.

It's still going to crack there again, it just gives you more time between repairs.

 

[ThePanzerFuhrer]

where I'm digging in my yard it's pretty similar with clay/gravel mix from about 2' on down (haven't gone more than 8ft deep yet, no idea how far it goes)
only sucky bit is that it is all clay and 1-3" gravel with big rocks mixed in, nothing in between so I can't just toss it straight on the driveway

Yeah you need all the fine stone #4-3/4” to make it firm up. If that’s missing it will forever be soft :(