A few projects I have done recently

[CM1995]

I know one guy who put 3D Trimble and a fully automatic coupler on a 35 ton machine specifically to hammer and dig rock to grade. Last time I talked to him, he hadn't had any abnormal issues compared to his 25 ton machine with the same GPS.

Good info. Thanks for sharing!

I didn't think it would affect anything since it's just a couple of days of running the hammer.

Side note - had a local outfit look at adding aux. hydros and a QC to our 321 to run the hammer. QC no issue however the 321's pump doesn't put out enough GPM to run this hammer.

 

[AzIron]

Your 321 won't like a 5000lbs hammer anyway you feel it gets a light ass and your 325 has a fair bit more weight wich will engage the rock a lot more piston rebound is a big part of hammer technique

Its been well studied what hammers will do to a machine and its not nearly as stressful as using a ripper bucket in rock i would imagine tech components hold up to abuse in the same fashion the rest of the machine does

I have machines with thousands of hours of hammer time there is not much to note we ran a test machine in rock with a ripper bucket and after like 500 hrs that thing was showing the abuse even in the electrical

 

[willie59]

In my experience, the thing one has to be careful about with hydraulic breakers on an excavator is the hydraulic couplers. Standard flat face couplers don't like the hydraulic pulse impact. It will do 2 things, 1) brinell the steel balls of the coupler eventually making it near impossible to make or break the coupler connection if it 2) doesn't do worse, which I've seen, that hydraulic pulse makes the innards of the flat face coupler come unglued inside sending metal fragments into the system. Not a good thing. My best remedy was using Stucchi VEPHD couplers, they're connect under pressure connectors and breakers don't harm them a bit. The downside, the VEPHD couplers have threads that screw them together, unlike flat face that snaps together and secured by the balls. Using the Stucchi VEPHD, the vibration of the breaker would make the "screw loose". That's when I starting using a single wrap of Gorilla duct tape around the coupler and a radiator hose clamp to bite down on it and prevent the coupler from screwing loose. Yeah, I know, more to do. But one thing I know about hydraulic breakers is that they break $--t including themselves and the machine.

 

[hvy 1ton]

Stucchi started making VEPHDL couplers with a locking pin to mitigate the vibration issue. I only know about them because I saw a set in person at the hydraulic shop last year.

 

[willie59]

Stucchi started making VEPHDL couplers with a locking pin to mitigate the vibration issue. I only know about them because I saw a set in person at the hydraulic shop last year.

Sweet!!!

 

[AzIron]

In my experience, the thing one has to be careful about with hydraulic breakers on an excavator is the hydraulic couplers. Standard flat face couplers don't like the hydraulic pulse impact. It will do 2 things, 1) brinell the steel balls of the coupler eventually making it near impossible to make or break the coupler connection if it 2) doesn't do worse, which I've seen, that hydraulic pulse makes the innards of the flat face coupler come unglued inside sending metal fragments into the system. Not a good thing. My best remedy was using Stucchi VEPHD couplers, they're connect under pressure connectors and breakers don't harm them a bit. The downside, the VEPHD couplers have threads that screw them together, unlike flat face that snaps together and secured by the balls. Using the Stucchi VEPHD, the vibration of the breaker would make the "screw loose". That's when I starting using a single wrap of Gorilla duct tape around the coupler and a radiator hose clamp to bite down on it and prevent the coupler from screwing loose. Yeah, I know, more to do. But one thing I know about hydraulic breakers is that they break $--t including themselves and the machine.

Yea i was always to cheap to put quick couplers on the bigger hammers

The 1100lbs ones on the backhoe have them but that's to make it easy and for small work where you might swap once or twice

With the bigger machines we always just used jic fittings and and had 2 machines there or planned out to swap once a day

Stucchi is expensive and I am a cheap ass

 

[CM1995]

Your 321 won't like a 5000lbs hammer anyway you feel it gets a light ass and your 325 has a fair bit more weight wich will engage the rock a lot more piston rebound is a big part of hammer technique

The 321 is about 8K lbs lighter than the 325. I think it would handle it but it doesn't matter at this point since it doesn't have aux. hydros and not going to get them.

In my experience, the thing one has to be careful about with hydraulic breakers on an excavator is the hydraulic couplers. Standard flat face couplers don't like the hydraulic pulse impact.

What Willie said.. Yes flat face couplers will come apart on a hoe and hammer this size.

Yea i was always to cheap to put quick couplers on the bigger hammers

The 1100lbs ones on the backhoe have them but that's to make it easy and for small work where you might swap once or twice

With the bigger machines we always just used jic fittings and and had 2 machines there or planned out to swap once a day

Stucchi is expensive and I am a cheap ass

We have QC's on the 305's to run a hammer and plate tamp. No issues with those so far but it's a little hammer.

Yeah those Stucchi's are expensive. The 325 has threaded couplers we take on and off. Sucks when the hammers been running due to being hot but is tried and true and won't come apart like QC's will.

 

[willie59]

On the bigger excavators, 200 class and up, it's really better to direct connect, JIC or whatever, as opposed to quick couplers. But when I was still in the bizz we had rental customers that requested quick couplers as they would be frequently swapping bucket and breaker. Whatever skippy, here ya go, that's why I used the Stucchi couplers. As for the 5K breaker on your 210, never did that, always fitted them to a 250 or bigger. I say go for it, I'm curious how that works out.