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Manufacturers suggest
grapples should be among the top five attachments in a contractor's
toolbox. But which one should be used when?
To
grapple is to move or grasp heavy objects with a hinged device,
or as Rusty Schaefer, marketing manager for Case Construction Equipment
in Racine, WI, puts it, a grapple allows the contractor to handle
"irregularly shaped material." Savvy contractors should know that
grapples can expand the versatility of a variety of base carriers
and free up valuable machines for use at other job sites. A grapple
in your toolbox can also save money by reducing personnel costs
and making the job site safer.
"It takes the right tool
to get the job done efficiently and do it job after job after job,
for the long run," says Tom Connor, excavator product specialist
for Bobcat in West Fargo, ND. "Contractors need to acknowledge the
occasions when they're trying to accomplish a job with one type
of attachment when another one will get it done quicker and easier
and without damaging the equipment they're using."
"A
grapple is an easy, efficient tool," says Lance Mathern, Bobcat's
marketing director. "Anybody who has spent time being frustrated
with trying to get something into their bucket should have a grapple.
If you're doing any kind of breaking up of material, if you're doing
remodeling work and you've got to remove material prior to grading,
if you're doing any kind of site prep or land-clearing applications,
you'll want to have a grapple. If you do any kind of retaining wall
or rock work, you should have a grapple."
"Grapples
really do change a contractor's efficiency on a job," says Renee
Zimelis, product support engineer for ACS Industries in Kent, OH.
"They can have one machine on the job rather than two because that
one machine can do more than one function, and this means they don't
have as much capital investment in each job."
Yes, but which grapple—a
clamshell, tines, a thumb-and-bucket combination, a four-in-one-bucket,
or a rotating grapple? For excavators, Mathern thinks a hydraulic
clamp-(thumb-)and-bucket combination is a great way to get started
grappling. "You put your thumb on the backside of your bucket. And
although some operators initially worry the thumb will get in their
way, my opinion is that every bucket should be equipped with one.
Once you get used to it, the thumb is actually pretty much out of
the way for any kind of digging application, and if you run into
something when you're digging footings or a foundation, you have
your thumb right there to grab hold of that material and separate
it out. Obviously you'll want to assess the conditions you'll be
working in. In straight sandy conditions you don't need this kind
of attachment, but in almost any other kind of soil you're likely
to find yourself dealing with rocks, tree roots, maybe old construction
debris. Being able to pick those materials out and place them out
of the way makes the job a lot easier.
"You
also get a lot of excavating and grading contractors who do a significant
amount of remodeling work. And on any kind of remodeling project
when you're going to use a breaker and then have to pick up and
get rid of what you break up, a grapple enables you to pick up those
materials and sort them and place them in a dump truck to haul them
away."
It's
important to remember that grapples require auxiliary hydraulics
to operate, and Mathern points out that for the most efficient operation
and ease of handling, these should be variable-flow, preferably
fingertip-controlled hydraulics. "You don't want your control to
be simply on and off, because you don't want the attachment to smash
down on whatever you're aiming to pick up, whether it's a rock or
a piece of wood. You want to be able to pick it up cleanly. With
Bobcat's attachment you use the thumb control on the joystick to
feather the movement of the attachment. This kind of control is
so sensitive we've had operators pick up a golf ball and place it
on a fence post."
Zimelis
likes a tine grapple on excavators to clear woodwaste. "Typically
what we're looking at is four tines on top and three interlacing
tines underneath where the thumb would ordinarily be. With this
kind of configuration, the grapple works like a hand as opposed
to a thumb and bucket, which is more like wearing a mitten. The
individual tines allow you to pull up material, and when you're
placing things away from the work area, you have a lot more control—if
you have a tub grinder on-site, for example. This kind of attachment
also allows you to grasp root balls and shake the dirt out, so you're
not paying to haul dirt and you're retaining as much of the soil
as possible. With the hydraulic force of the grapple you can also
crush brush.
"Especially
for land-clearing operations, we like to encourage people to think
about getting a coupler with a thumb and then a rake in place of
a bucket-and-rake combination. They can use the bucket for excavating
or clearing, put the bucket down with the coupler and pick up the
rake, and have a grapple-type arrangement. We have literature that
shows operators how to mix and match, to use the thumb with the
bucket for some things and the thumb with the rake for grapple types
of operations."
"This
scenario has been fairly well received," says Mel Schindler, ACS
inside sales manager. "People realize they can buy a thumb and put
it on the excavator, buy a rake and put it on the excavator, and
then use the thumb and rake as a grapple or with a bucket. They
don't necessarily have to take their rake with them every time,
and in fact I think they use the thumb with the bucket more frequently.
It's a benefit to their efficiency.
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"At ACS we are promoting
the idea of purchasing complete attachment packages—whatever
the customer needs in the way of couplers, buckets, rakes, thumbs—all
in a turnkey package where the components are designed to complement
and work with each other. The purchase of a turnkey package also
allows a contractor to place one order and receive everything together,
which makes installation a lot easier. Parts support and warranty
and those kinds of follow-up issues are also a lot more streamlined
and efficient. Typically we'll see a dealer buy a brand A thumb,
a brand B bucket, and a brand C rake and try to put them all together.
This might be slightly cheaper, but they have more expensive installation
time along with support issues, and this leads to rapidly decreasing
any dollar advantage from purchasing piecemeal.
"Certainly
having the flexibility of having an excavator or a wheel loader
coupler-equipped allows a contractor to use tools or attachments
that are more efficient at doing specific tasks, and this translates
into dollars. If by using correct attachments, we can potentially
save a contractor three, four, or five hours a week over the life
of a machine, that means a lot for productivity and long-term savings
to the bottom line."
For
contractors who need to pick up and place materials with an excavator,
a rotating grapple is versatile and cost-effective. "When you're
talking about using a grapple in 80 to 90% of your operations, you'll
want to consider a rotating grapple," says Connor. "Sometimes known
as a clam shell, a rotating grapple is basically two opposing buckets
that hydraulically open and close. This function is combined with
another hydraulic function that rotates that assembly. Plus, you
still have the normal excavator ability to curl or roll an attachment.
"Let's
say a 4x4 is lying perpendicular to your excavator. You can pick
that up with the grapple, curl it with your bucket circuit, rotate
it with the rotating circuit, and place it directly in a posthole.
Or instead of being out there with a crowbar trying to move something
like a large boulder around, you can use the rotating grapple to
place it just where the landscape architect designed it to be. Granted,
the thumb and bucket is a tremendous improvement over hauling something
like that in a loader bucket, but this rotating-grapple arrangement
gives you the feeling you're moving whatever it is with your hands.
It's also a valuable offset of labor with a machine.
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"Plus, you can also dig
with a rotating grapple. In fact, in specific applications a rotating
grapple gives you an advantage for digging in that you can dig straight
down, where with a backhoe or an excavator you typically have to
dig a trench to get a certain depth. The best example I can think
of is the homeowner who had water in the inside corner of his basement.
One solution was to use an excavator with a trenching bucket, in
which case I would probably have had to open up about 10 feet of
linear trench to get down to that corner. With the rotating bucket
I opened up a trench 18 inches wide, which is the width of the bucket,
and the whole length of the trench was probably whatever the opening
is, 36 inches. The rotating grapple is very popular in Europe where
they want to minimize disruption from construction."
If
a wheel loader is your base carrier, ACS offers a grapple that's
particularly well suited to land clearing, what Zimelis calls a
brush rake that allows an operator to do the pick-and-shake routine
to get dirt or soil out of whatever is grappled. The tines also
allow the grapple to penetrate the soil and sift out rocks and roots
and stumps. "Then you use the grapple-arm feature to retain the
debris in the rake to load it into a dump truck or burn it, whatever
you're going to do with it. They use the brush rake in Florida to
clear out citrus orchards because the trees have fairly shallow
root systems."
For
material handling and placement using skid-steers, Bobcat offers
both bucket-style and tooth-style grapples. "A general contractor
who has to do dirt work, whether it's backfilling around foundations,
hauling pea rock, or anything like that, in a matter of minutes
he can drop his bucket and put on the grapple," says Connor. "We
offer probably half a dozen different models of grapple attachments
for skid-steer loaders, including a bucket style that has a flat
bottom. If you're handling very small items you don't want to lose
or if you don't want to leave a path as you're going from a site
to a disposal area, you'll want to consider a bucket-style attachment.
The tined or toothed industrial grapple is great if you want to
minimize the amount of dirt, sand, or gravel that you pick up in
rubble, which helps reduce the cost of what you're having hauled
away. And it beats a guy driving a skid-steer around with a conventional
bucket on it and two other guys chucking in material.
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"We see a fair number
of grapples on skid-steers being used when contractors have to bust
up and remove concrete. You don't want to use a regular bucket for
demolition because you're going to shorten its life. Pulling and
prying at concrete that's still connected to rebar and chopping
the concrete up with the bucket is not something this kind of equipment
is made for. Plus, you try to drag material with just a conventional
bucket on a skid-steer and you run the risk of the material falling
out. With a grapple you close it and you've secured the load."
"A
skid-steer in a grading and excavation operation is a machine with
a lot of versatility," says Schaefer. "In order to expand that versatility,
you may have to handle irregularly shaped objects, and a scrap grapple
for this kind of machine can do it much faster, much more efficiently
than a regular dirt bucket. I'm not saying you won't be able to
pick up a stump in a dirt bucket, but with a grapple you can move
it much faster. And many times using a grapple eliminates hand labor,
and this is safer and more cost-effective." Like other equipment
manufacturers, Schaefer also recommends a four-in-one bucket, which
won't handle the capacity of a scrap grapple but will in fact move
stumps or logs or concrete. "A dirt bucket would be good for hard-packed
or granular material," says Schaefer. "But a four-in-one bucket
will handle job cleanup as well as irregular objects like stumps
and logs."
Mathern
agrees. "Your combination bucket is very, very popular. Let's say
you're doing initial site cleanup prior to grading and you've got
piles of sticks and debris. If you've ever tried to push that with
a bucket—tried to roll debris into your bucket—you know it can be
almost impossible."
If contractors can't
get what they want to fit their application off the shelf, manufacturers
also specialize in custom grapples. Dave DeWeese of Werk-Brau Company
in Findlay, OH, estimates 40% of the grapples his company sells
are customized in some way—"either extra openings, larger capacity,
or the fact that they have lifting rings attached to them so not
only can you tear apart something or move something, you can move
new product in place."
Aside
from application, what else do contractors need to consider when
they're thinking about buying a grapple attachment? First, according
to Sara Bemowski at CEAttachments in Cedarburg, WI, whatever you
select should come equipped with a dual hydraulic system. This allows
operators to handle uneven loads. Second, be aware of exactly what
you're going to be using the grapple for. "My suggestion," says
Bemowski, "is the 80/20 rule. If 80% of the time you're going to
be needing to pick up dirt and therefore need a solid bottom on
the grapple bucket, go with that. If 80% of the time or something
close to that you would need something with an open bottom, that
would be more on the lines of an industrial grapple. My best advice
is once you have established that you need some kind of grapple,
talk to the equipment dealer to see what they would suggest for
the equipment the attachment is going to be used with. If it's going
to be a really big loader, you're not going to want to put something
like a utility fork on it because in no time the tines are going
to be bent. At the same time, an industrial grapple on a small loader
isn't going to handle all that well." Connor also cautions against
using, in an industrial setting, a lightweight utility grapple like
the one Bobcat sells for agricultural applications. "There is no
way a utility grapple has the integrity of an industrial grapple."
If
you buy a grapple from an independent manufacturer, be sure it will
fit whatever equipment you plan to use it with. "At Werk-Brau we
make several different classes of tines based on the machine type,"
says DeWeese. "The idea is to match the OEM [original equipment
manufacturer] specifications as far as lifting capacity, hydraulic
capacities, and rotation, which is why we have probably 20% more
classes than anyone else out there. Our products are designed to
maximize the performance of the host machines. If it's a John Deere
200, it's going to be a different grapple than what you would be
using on a John Deere 300."
Decide
how efficient you want your machines to be. "The contractors who
want to use their machines as tool carriers," says Ryan Murphy of
INDECO North America in Stratford, CT, "are spending money on quick
couplers because they're looking for versatility. They want to be
able to switch between various attachments easily. What a coupler
does is allow you to keep pins in all your attachments and hook
an attachment up to the hydraulics. You just drive over and pick
it up."
Manufacturers
insist there isn't a lot of learning involved in using grapples
effectively, and Rick Longstaff of Vista Training in Burlington,
WI, says there's currently no call for this kind of specialized
training. "I've never known OSHA to cite something specific to a
grapple," says Longstaff. "They would site something specific that
happened when a grapple was being used by citing the general training
requirement rule that the employer has to train employees how to
operate the equipment they're using. But anytime someone doesn't
understand the basic operation of a piece of equipment, they can
create dangerous situations very quickly. With a grapple, for example,
you sometimes have center-of-gravity issues. Let's say you were
picking up a 30-foot-long log. You don't want to pick it up on the
left or the right side but in the middle. Or do you? Maybe the stump
is on the right-hand side and the thinner part is on the left, so
you have to think more about where the center of gravity is. Another
thing is picking up a stack of pipes. Your grapple needs to have
contact with all the pieces you're moving. Otherwise you could cause
a dangerous situation, especially if you're working in traffic."
"You
can pick up a larger piece of material with a grapple than you can
with a bucket alone," says Mathern at Bobcat. "So a grapple may
allow you to get ahold of something that's more than you can handle,
as opposed to a bucket, where you can only work with what you can
get in the bucket. You should be looking at the relative size of
your material and the size of the bucket for your machine and not
go out grabbing hold of a boulder that's half the size of your loader."
"Relatively
speaking grapples are an expensive item," says Ray Szwec, district
manager for Allied Construction Products LLC in Cleveland, OH. "They're
easy to maintain. And with a minimal investment, a grapple will
pay for itself many times over."
Journalist Penelope
Grenoble O'Malley writes frequently for environmental publications.
GEC
- July/August 2004
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