Table of Contents

Click here to get more.

• HOW TO USE DIG ASSIST START

We’ve made Dig Assist Start — the basic package in our Dig Assist portfolio of apps — standard on new Volvo models ranging from EC220E to EC550E. We believe it’s a powerful tool for both new and experienced operators. It’s incredibly easy to use and has a very short learning curve, but I know some of you may be skeptical of this kind of technology. That’s why I wanted to put together this blog series to show you how easy the full package of Dig Assist apps are to use and how much of an impact it can have on your productivity.

A while back, I shared 6 ways to generate quick ROI with excavator machine controls, but this series goes more in depth on how you can set up some of the most common tasks to make digging, trenching and excavating much faster and easier.

• In Part 1, we’ll focus on Dig Assist Start — particularly how to level, slope and take quick measurements.
• To learn how to follow a line or create excavation profiles direct from the cab, head over to Part 2: In-Field Design.
• Part 3: Dig Assist Enhancements quickly lays out some recent enhancements we’ve made to the app that make it even faster and easier to use.

HOW TO USE DIG ASSIST START

Dig Assist Start comes standard on new Volvo EC220E to EC550E models — it’s optional on most other Volvo crawler and wheeled excavator models. It includes three simple features:

1. Level
2. Slope
3. Quick Measure

With Start, you simply touch the bucket to the ground and tell the machine how far down you want to dig and at what angle. The screen will show you how far away your bucket is from the target depth (the horizontal green line) and provide a light bar to help you gauge how close you’re getting with each pass.

You don’t have to actually watch the screen while you’re working, you can simply reference the light bar out of the corner of your eye. When you see blue, keep digging. If you see green, you’re on grade. If you start seeing yellow or orange, you’ve dug too far and need to back off. If you’d rather have a sound tell you you’re on grade, you can turn that feature on. It’s that simple.

If you want to do more complicated tasks you can, and as I mentioned, we cover a few of those in Parts 2 and 3 of this series. But for the typical excavator operator, we’ve made the program almost as simple as taking a picture with your phone. To illustrate just how easy Dig Assist Start is to use, here are a few examples that show how the app works in real-world scenarios.

The first things you’ll do is select your quick coupler, measure your buckets and store them in the system. Adding buckets and other attachments allows Dig Assist to make accurate measurements while using the various features. Once that information is entered and stored (it only takes minutes), you’re ready to start.

Digging a Trench with Slope: Let’s say you need to dig a trench 10 feet deep at a 3-degree slope. First, you’ll use the “Slope” feature to set your parameters:

1. Touch the bucket teeth to the ground and hit “0.0” in the bottom right to establish your bench.
   
2. Touch the dimension area, and on the pop-up screen, use the arrows (or type it in using the calculator icon) to select the depth you want to dig to. In our scenario, it’s 10 feet.
   
3. Now touch the angle icon to add the 3-degree slope. If you prefer percentages, you can enter it as a percent gradient too.
   
4. A few seconds after you enter the depth and slope, the view will return to the main screen and show you how far you need to dig to hit your target. Now, start digging — the light bar I mentioned earlier will let you know when you’re getting close (blue = keep going, green = on target, yellow/orange = you’ve dug too far). Here, the operator started with 10 ft and now has 1.8 ft to go to hit his target.
   

If this particular job didn’t require a slope, the “Level” feature would allow you to maintain a consistent depth for the length of the trench.

Quick Measure: This feature is used when you want to calculate the values of angle and/or distance using your bucket tip. Here’s how you do it:

1. Set the bucket tooth on the starting point of your measurement.
2. Tap the ‘+’ symbol to start the measurement.
3. Move the bucket. The screen shows you the distances and angles from where you started to where the bucket tooth is right now.
4. Tap the ‘X’ symbol to erase the measurement.
   

In this side-by-side graphic, you can see that the left represents where you would hit “+” to activate Quick Measure.” The middle picture shows Quick Measure is on, but the tooth hasn’t moved it yet — the distances are 0. The right side shows after you’ve moved the bucket (the screen gives you a live reading) — these dimensions represent the distance between point A and point B, etc.

One of the easiest ways to use Quick Measure is to check your work. For example, if you want to check that your trench is 8 feet deep:

1. Tap your reference at ground level.
2. Tap various places at the bottom of your trench to confirm it’s 8 feet down. If you’re digging a slope, it can measure that too.
   

Dig Assist Start is also handy when used in applications such as surface mining where you may need to remove 10 feet of overburden, for example. With Start, you program in that you’re going to be digging 10 feet down, and then you always have that target to dig to. At the end of the job, you can always check your work with Quick Measure.

If you haven’t yet used Dig Assist Start, give it a try. You’ll find the features are very easy to program, and once you’ve used them a few times, Dig Assist will become an app you rely on every day to simplify and speed up your jobs. There are also multiple views you can use depending on your preference, including Volvo Smart View which allows you to toggle to a 360-degree bird’s-eye view of the machine and its surroundings to improve jobsite safety.

G-Top Product Page

Be sure to check out Part 2, where I cover additional features available with In-field Design. If you have any questions about Dig Assist Start or the Volvo Co-pilot display, post them in the comments below and we’ll get back to you.

5

1

vote

Article Rating

Skeleton Buckets: 3 Problems You Could Face When Using

You'd be silly to think that you won't come across problems when using an excavator. Whether that be worn pins, broken teeth or stuck material in your attachments. But, what are the potential problems you could face when using a Skeleton Bucket and what would we suggest to help combat them? In this post we're going to discuss the 3 most common problems that you could face and some tips that might make fixing these problems easier. Keep reading to find out more.

Top 3 Problems you can face when using a Skeleton Bucket on your Excavator:

1. Material Too Small Or Getting Stuck

If you know what a Skeleton Bucket is, or Riddle Bucket as it's also known, then you know that it's one of the easiest ways to separate out different types of material when using your excavator. The Skeleton Bucket is designed like a Digging Bucket but with tines at the back so that you can scope up a mound of material and shake out the smaller bits like dirt and rocks. The problem with this is that it will only work with certain sizes of material. If you're trying to sort small rocks from your dirt this could be a challenging to separate if the material you want to remove is smaller than the space between the tines as the material will just fall straight through. You may also find that material gets stuck between the tines, this isn't a huge problem as it shouldn't effect the effectiveness of your attachment too much but if this does happen we recommend just using a hammer, rod or similar to knock it through.

If you're wanting to separate rocks that are too small and pass through the tines of your Skeleton Bucket then we would recommend looking into a Screening Bucket. These attachments are a lot more expensive but have smaller gaps to separate out the small rocks too.

2. Tines Bending

Skeleton Buckets are one of the more fragile excavator attachments because of the slotted back. Although the tines are usually made of a thicker steel to withstand the harsh materials passing through, they are still susceptible to bending and twisting because of the design. It's a similar idea to breaking sticks, if you spread out 5 sticks and try to break them all at once they will snap very easily, but if you hold all 5 stick together and try to break them it's much harder. Because of the reduced strength, it can cause the tines to bend or twist, especially if you're using your Skeleton Bucket in extremely harsh material, with much heavier material or over working the bucket.

To avoid your Skeleton Bucket tines bending or twisting we recommend breaking up the material you're wanting to separate first. For example: use a Frost Ripper Tooth or Digging Bucket to churn up the ground first so that you're not putting excessive force through the tines of your Skeleton Bucket when trying to load the bucket. We also recommend purchasing a Skeleton Bucket with additional tine support like on the Rhinox Skeleton Bucket that has additional straps of steel welded in the opposite direction to the tines to support and help them keep their shape.

3. Wearing Out Your Coupler

The final, and most costly problem you could face when using a Skeleton Bucket is wearing out your Coupler. To separate material with a Skeleton Bucket you have to vigorously shake the crowd control gearstick on your excavator to make the bucket shake out the materials. This harsh action is very wearing on your excavator. This usually means that you will have to frequently replace your bucket pins and occasionally your Bucket Link and Tipping Link. This also means that if you're mounting your Skeleton Bucket to your Coupler rather than directly to the machine, you will start to wear your coupler when shaking the gearstick.

As you can imagine, wearing out your Coupler is a lot more expensive to repair or replace than replacing a set of pins. Most Coupler manufacturers will also have a clause in the warranty agreement that says they won't replace or repair your Coupler if it becomes damaged if used with a Skeleton Bucket. So, we also recommend that if you're using a Skeleton Bucket, or even something that causes a similar action like a Jack Hammer, that you always directly mount your attachment to the machine using bucket pins and NOT a coupler.

More information about Skeleton Buckets:

So there you have it - the 3 main problems that you could face when using a Skeleton Bucket on your excavator. If you have any further questions or queries, leave us a comment down below. Or contact us via email at sales@rhinox-group.us or call +1 267 861 0812

Contact us to discuss your requirements of volvo excavator bucket teeth. Our experienced sales team can help you identify the options that best suit your needs.