I had a shaft on my excavator bucket to break Saturday. It is my impression cold roll steel is about same as the metal they used. It has to be drilled for grease and then a head welded on it. Quick guess on cost of materials will be $20 compared to $100 to purchase the shaft (if the lower price one, higher price one is over $200). It requires drilling and welding to make the shaft. Tractor shop I deal with said should be no problem with the cold roll. The shaft is about (have not measure it yet) 1 1/2 inches in diam and probably just over a foot. Any thoughts?
Regular round stock most likely won't be round nor smooth. I use chrome plated hydraulic cylinder rod from a hydraulic repair place. It's about $5 per inch new, but they may have an old rod laying around they can cut up and fix you right up.
If you have someone that can do the work (welding and machining) for free then using, as Jeff suggested, chrome cylinder rod will be cheaper.
I've found though that unless it's something that needs to be back in service pronto, or something like that, it's usually cheaper in the long run to just buy the mass produced part.
It kind of shakes out like that MasterCard commercial;
12" of shaft @ $5/inch.............. $60
Welding & Machining................. $30
Gas to run around for the first 2... $10
Just got my latest www.baileynet.com hydraulics catalog today. Through them they offer 1.5" chrome plated rod cutoffs/drops for 15 - 19" lengths for $19. By-the-inch the same rod is $2.04 min of 16" per order.
Apparently my local guy has been more than doubling my price, but that included cutting, chamfering the ends, and drilling two holes in my shafts while I waited and watched him do it.
Why it broke is a question I wish I knew. The shaft is drilled for grease fitting and then drilled for greased to be pumped into the center of the bushing width wise. It snapped where the two drill lines intercept (the one running the length and the one through the side). It is hard to tell due to grease but it looks like it was not all fresh. The break was middle ways in the boom at an area when there is no wear bushing only a larger diameter spacer bushing.
Murf, the math; let me add a little more, shipping...
Jeff, think I know why your guy charges you what he does...that watching part.
Bake to the breaking, guess that is one reason making one seemed to hold some value to it. The bucket on it does not exceed the machine's specs.
It's not complicated Kenny, when the load exceeds the strength of what the load is bearing on, crunch happens.
In the case of an excavator bucket shaft, I'm pretty confident on saying the likely cause was either someone using the bucket as a battering ram, such as to break up concrete, or it was used to pop stumps, rocks, etc., out of the ground using nothing but brute force that were just too big for the machine.
Most hydraulic systems are capable of exerting far more pressure than the rest of the machine is capable of withstanding.
The usual culprit is putting the back of the bucket flat on the ground, with the teeth under a stump or rock, and prying it free using the curl function. In this case there is both tremendous leverage and the lack of any object readily willing to move. The bucket (large footprint) would have to push down into the earth, or the object has to come up, or something has to break.
I've seen lots of hydraulic lines explode when the operator got a little too carried away doing this.
Murf his machine is relatively small---prolly no more than 5-6K lbs of force at the bucket. Lately I've been renting Bobcat and Caterpillar miniex's and am very shocked---nay disappointed--- at how much these machines are NOT capable of (these are the 7,000 to 10,000 lb class).
If I understand Kenny (and it's reeeeeealy hard) the hole is perpendicular to the longitudinal hole and in the middle of the length. If yes, then possibly the bushings are so badly worn both in the bucket and the boom that the shaft fatigued from flexing at the weakest point---the center.
It has been used a good bit to dig stumps but a few months replaced the 24 or so inch bucket with a 30 inch bucket. At that time the shaft looked great. For the vast majority of the use since then has been digging dirt from piles where dumped when pond was dug. That was 50 or so years back and the dirt is solid and has stumps along in it. Some of the last work was the hardest stump digging it has done with that bucket. I was not around the machine when the shaft broke so not sure how it was being used but my son in law is normally decent and does not beat up a machine.
The reason I am posting back is just got firm prices from Volvo...the shaft that will cost like $50 for me to make is $230.59 and the steel bushings the shaft ran through are $98.78 each with two required. Again this is a shaft of about one foot long and 1 1/2 in diameter but with drilled and taped for grease fitting.
If you like those how about the cover for the fuse block is a plastic model about 1 inch square and maybe 5 inches long. Since you can not buy the cover only the fuse block with the cover is $147.17.
Now if those prices were installed would be much easier to swallow.
So to local machine shop for shaft and steel bushings it looks like. Can also hire a fuse cover milled from block aluminum for less. That would look neat.
Shaft for bucket: Welding -- General Tractor Discussion Forum
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06-21-2010, 16:11 
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