Backhoe 3 Design Suggestions

Friends

We have the rented backhoe on site right now. It's a chance to reverse engineer a great, industry standard design so we can build our own. The size is just about right for a front-loader attachment to LifeTrac, using a reinforced front quick attach plate, to be built for LifeTrac 6-style tractors.

Our own prototype from last year (sitting behind the old workshop) has issues around the pivot and range of motion geometries.

We need to redesign the pivot such that we use trunnion-mounted cylinders (not end-mounted cylinders) - which means we would need to weld a trunnion mount onto a regular cylinder. Without this, it is not possible to attain 180 degree side to side motion.

The rented backhoe on site has all these issues worked out. I suggest that someone take down all the measurements:

1. lengths of all joints, measuring from pivot to pivot 2. lengths of all cylinders from pivot to pivot, in the closed and extended position.

This will allow us to build our own. We want to use our own modular 4x4 beams with holes, 1/2" wall thickness. Then the trick would be to design joining plates between the beams, which would be custom joining plates.

If someone has the time to take the measurements, please do so. I suggesting taking a picture at every range of motion limit (bucket, stick, boom, side-to-side) and measuring the pin to pin distances.

Who can do this?

Marcin