9 Types of Excavator Buckets You Should Know

Excavators in different operations need to be installed with different working attachments. Common attachments include buckets, impact hammers, trenchers, hydraulic clamps, timber grabbers, etc.

But do you know that the excavator buckets alone come in over a dozen types? Each type has its own unique advantages. Below, Isabel, the engineer of YUFAN, will guide you to learn about 9 common excavator buckets.

Standard Bucket (AKA Earthmoving Bucket)

The standard bucket is a commonly used bucket in small and medium-sized excavators. It uses standard plate thickness. Moreover, there is no obvious reinforcement process on the bucket body. Its features are:

✅ Large bucket volume, large bucket opening area, and a large stacking surface, a high loading coefficient, high efficiency, and low production cost.

✅ It is suitable for the relatively light working environments, such as the excavation of general clay and the loading of sand, soil, and gravel. It is also called an earthmoving bucket.

It also has disadvantages. Due to the thin plate thickness and the lack of reinforcement plates and anti-wear plates, the service life is shorter.

Reinforced Bucket (Rock Shovel Bucket)

The rock bucket has a similar shape to the standard bucket. The difference is, the overall structure of the rock bucket is made of thickened plates. The bucket teeth, bucket wings, the sides of the bucket teeth, the bottom of the bucket have all been reinforced. In addition, the rock bucket is equipped with side guard plates and protective plates. The bucket teeth seats are made of special materials for rocks.

The unique protective reinforcement of the rock bucket makes it have strong resistance to wear and pressure, bending. It is suitable for loading heavy operations such as stone blocks, sub-hard rocks, weathered rocks, hard rocks, and blasted minerals. It is widely used in harsh working conditions such as mineral mining.

Soil Loosening Bucket

The soil loosening bucket, as the name suggests, is mainly designed for loosening the soil. It is equipped with high-strength wear-resistant steel plates to reduce the wear during soil breaking. Thus it has a longer service life.

It is mainly used for crushing, excavation and loading operations in hard soil, moderately hard rocks, and windblown rocks. It usually has single teeth or multiple teeth. The bucket teeth are sharp and easy to break the soil. The disadvantage is that the bucket capacity is relatively small.

Inclined Bucket

The inclined bucket can be controlled to rotate the digging bucket through the action of an oil cylinder. The inclination angle is 45 degrees. Without changing the position of the excavator, it can perform operations, easily completing accurate tasks that ordinary buckets cannot accomplish.

It is suitable for leveling slopes, leveling surfaces, and clearing sediment in rivers and ditches. It is not suitable for heavy operations such as digging hard soil or hard rock soil.

Ditch Shovel

The ditch shovel, as the name suggests, is mainly used for digging ditches needed for water conservancy, roads, agriculture, and some pipelines. There are trapezoidal ditch shovel and rectangular ditch shovel.

Due to different operational requirements, ditch shovels come in various shapes and widths, such as rectangles, trapezoids, triangles, and so on. Its key advantage is that they can form the trench in one pass, usually without the need for additional trimming. So it has relatively high operational efficiency.

Grille Bucket

It is similar in shape to the standard bucket, but its bottom is a grid-like net. It is suitable for separating relatively soft excavated materials, and the separation and excavation can be completed at one time.

It is widely used in municipal, agricultural, forestry, water conservancy, earthwork and other projects.

Grab Bucket

Grabs can be classified into shell grabs and orange peel grabs based on their shape. As the names suggest, the shell grabs consist of two complete buckets. While the orange peel grabs are composed of three or more jaw plates, resembling a peeled orange.

The working principle of grabs is driven by hydraulic cylinders, which move to open and close to grasp materials and complete the operation. They are suitable for excavating foundation pits and deep pits in construction sites, as well as loading loose materials such as coal, sand, and gravel. Especially in environments with limited space, grabs can perform excavation and loading work on the sides.

The disadvantage is that the digging force is weak and is not suitable for hard land. They can only grasp loose materials.

Thumb Bucket

Doesn’t the thumb bucket look like a human hand? It has a rigid linkage and is connected to the bucket arm of the excavator using a welded bracket.

In front of the bucket, it is similar to a baffle, reducing the possibility of material falling or allowing for direct material capture. The bucket is retracted into the clamp bucket to pick up, grasp, sort, and process various types of materials and objects. It is suitable for various working conditions and is practical and safe.

The 4-in-1 Bucket

The four-in-one bucket appears to be much more complex and has more comprehensive functions. It can be used to perform loading, leveling, and clamping operations, and has all the functions of digging buckets such as mud buckets, rotating buckets, and earthwork buckets. Moreover, with hydraulic cylinders, it can automatically unload without the need for a tipping bucket, which is convenient and fast.

With more functions, the operation also requires more technical skills from the driver. Also, the four-in-one bucket is not suitable for heavy operations such as ditching or trenching. Additionally, with more components and functions, there are more places that require maintenance and care.

Having seen so many types of buckets, each type has its own characteristics and applicable working conditions. By choosing the appropriate accessories based on the construction needs, one can achieve twice the result with half the effort.

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