loader build resumes!

[JSinMO]

That is awesome!

[Harry]

Congratulations Bob. The feeling of accomplishment is terrific.

Keep the Peace
Harry

[Chad]

Congrats Bob! A long time coming but well worth it from the looks of it. Well done!

Sent from my Pixel 4a using Tapatalk

[MattA]

Nice work Bob

[thebuildist]

A little cleanup and detailing this morning:

I built a lightweight aluminum cover to conceal the rat's nest of hoses and help to keep them routed and organized.

I created a "conduit" on top of the right hand boom arm to contain and dress up the hoses down that path. It's 2" gray PVC conduit, sliced longitudinally, and clamped to steel straps that I welded to the top of the arm.

While I was at it, I re-routed the hoses a bit to clean up their appearance and minimize hose strain.

I painted the 3 exposed pressure and return pipes, which are raw steel and will rust very quickly.

I clamped the pressure supply pipe to the diagonal brace in order to transmit its vibration/handling strain to that diagonal brace.

I created a bracket to which I clamped the return pipe as it enters the tower. This transmits the return pipe's vibration/handling strain into the bracket, which is bolted straight to the tower. Without that bracket, all that stress and strain was hanging on the hydro filter housing, which is a soft zinc or magnesium and not nearly strong enough for that load.

The pipe coming out of the loader valve was kind of hanging in free space, so I clamped its far end to the loader structure, since that end is where the strain of handling happens. Without a clamp there, the torque applied by vibration and handling will eventually loosen up the joints of that pipe as it runs over underneath the loader valve.

Final steps:
Bucket modifications and mounting and
Calculating and creating the concrete counterweight.

[Timj]

It sure turned out nice, Bob

[thebuildist]

After the Bad Day From Heck, I'm recovering nicely.

BTW: not to dwell on it, but I found out the next morning that a limb had fallen on my golf cart, destroying its canopy/roof. It was just not my day.

Anyway, recovering and resuming meant torching out the angled section that I need to remove. With that gone, I was able to put the bucket in the shop press and bend the flap outward that I had previously bent inward, putting it back more-or-less where it belongs.

That left me with a big sheet of steel with a crease in the middle, and I needed that crease to be gone. So I just worked my way down the length of the bend, bringing the ram down every 2 or 3 inches, pressing it flat as I went. This is time-consuming on an electric press since I had to bring the ram down 50 or more times. And it's and basically impossible on a manual press. There's no reason it couldn't actually be done, but a normal person just wouldn't have the willpower to stand there pumping the handle thousands of times all day long. It's just too demoralizing.

But with the electrified press it only took about 30 minutes to make a total of 3 passes , hopping a couple inches each time, up and down the crease and the now bowed centerline of the two "flaps". Ultimately it left the steel sheet fairly close to flat.

For those who might find it interesting, I electrified the press myself, using an old airless paint sprayer as the hydraulic pump. Details here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJJYvZ8D5YI

Then I trimmed the sheet to size and welded it into the gap.

The steel is around 1/8", and I used 3/32 7014 welding rod, which works very nicely. Not as clean and perfect as MIG, but not bad at all.

That left two sets of big gaps to be filled: The large open triangles where the flat plate transitions out to the original protruding/angled profile of the bucket shell, and the small diamond shaped cutouts left behind where I mistakenly cut the bucket shell the first time.

I used cardstock to make a template for the shapes I needed, then trace that shape onto steel place using a carbide scriber, then cut it out on the bandsaw.

Again welded with 3/32 7014 rod

So now I'm finally back to where I thought I was on Thursday, ready to attach the bucket shell to the quick-attach adapter.

But for the first time, I get to see what the machine will actually look like once it's finished up. And I'm liking what I see!

Bob

[thebuildist]

We're in the home stretch!

As of yesterday, the bucket is mounted. Not much to tell, I finished off in the direction I started. This time I flattened out the correct protrusion and ran a whole lot of weld bead.

Then ran a couple pieces of 4"x1/4" angle iron vertically at the back corners to carry the twisting forces up to the top of the bucket, because the quick-attach plate itself is mounted pretty low.

Then I drove the tractor up on 1.5" high boards, put the bucket flat on the floor, snugged the bucket up tight against the quick-attach plate, and tack welded it in place. I'll be welding a 1/2" hardened cutting edge underneath the current cutting edge. That extra 1/2" depth, combined with the tractor being 1.5" up in the air will give the bucket a 2" below grade cutting level. At full height it sits at 5'8" when it's level. I'm slightly underwhelmed by that figure, I had hoped to lift higher than the 5'11" of a stock 644. But all things told I chose the geometry I did for the best sense of strength and safety and good judgement. So I can live with it. If I built a second loader, I could start with this exact object and improve it. But working from a set of drawings created by nothing but my imagination, I'm still pleased with it.

Having said all that, it's not quite true to say "it's mounted." It's wasn't fully mounted, because the quick-attach bracket on the tractor didn't yet have locking pins installed. So if you back-dragged with it, the bucket would come off. That would be inconvenient.

So today I built and created the quick-attach locking pins.

I wanted a hardened pin, so I cut up the super hard shaft of a chisel from an electric jackhammer. I welded that pin to some 1" threaded rod. The idea is that turning the threaded rod will cause the pin to extend and retract.

I wanted the pin to have a large surface to bear against, so I drilled a matching hole through some 1" steel plate.

Then I used a piece of 1" black pipe as a spacer and welded the plate, spacer and 1" nut into a single assembly. Then I threaded/spun in the pin and welded a cheap socket on the end of the threaded rod, so that a 3/8 square driver can turn it.

Then I took some 7/16" rod and bent it into a speed handle. I ground a 3/8 square on one end, and now it's the driver tool to spin the pins in and out.

Finally I welded the pin assemblies in place. While I had the welder and tools out, I went ahead and welded some tabs and a spring in place on the back side of the quick-attach bracket, and that provides a way to mount the speed handle for storage. So though it's not great to have to use a tool to change quick-attach implements, at least that tool is permanently attached near where you need it.

So I'm down to 3 items: Weld on the new cutting edge, paint the bucket, and build a concrete counterweight.

Bob

[Eugen]

I would not be bothered by the 5'8" lifting height. It sounds good the higher the better, but if you went much higher, it would no longer be proportionate to the length of your tractor. If you really wanted to lift things much higher, perhaps you can make yourself a quick attach boom of sorts.

It's not easy to understand the quick attach mechanism you have now, but it seems good. Something I would definitely like to have on the 644.

[thebuildist]

I didn't want to reinvent the wheel, so I researched what quick-attach is out there. I decided that the "universal" skidsteer quick-attach system is too large for this machine and unnecessarily complicated and expensive.

I came across the quick-attach used by Toro Dingo and that seemed like a good approach.
It's a lot like the "french cleat" used to hang cabinets on a wall. The implement has a folded over upper lip/cleat, and the machine has an adapter/platen that slips up under the cleat and lifts it up. Upon lifting, the implement rotates down and flattens back against the platen of the adapter, where it is then locked in place by two pins.

I would like to have used it in its stock configuration. But I really wanted the lifting point of the platen/adapter to be as wide as the boom. So I chose to use the Toro system, but make it wider, more like 29 inches wide instead of only 18 inches wide.

To make the permanent tractor quick attach assembly, I cut a "hooking" shape into each of the shackles that form the two bucket rotation joints at the bottom of each boom arm. And I then joined those two shackels by 6" C-channel, effectively making them into a single unit. That hook shape slips up under the lip/cleat of the bucket adapter plate. And then bought a couple of off-the shelf Toro Dingo bucket adapter plates and split them down the middle.

I hope this makes sense...

Bob