Design. Build. Test. " Monkey Claw" - new equipment attachment

hello [Laughter] good morning you guys it's the start of a brand new day and a new adventure is lying ahead of us we're gonna head out to clear lake minnesota that's the headquarters of cmp attachments that's the guys that make the hydra bucket and hydro grapple well i connected up with derrick the owner because i had an idea for a brand new attachment called the monkey claw and what it's really meant to do is meant for demolition but it's also meant to be a grapple so not only can you tear concrete out and use it as a heavy duty pry bar but you should also be able to wrap your monkey talons around it and hold it all the way to the truck it's like a modified version of the beak that we use a lot but i think it's going to be a little bit more versatile but of course we don't know if it's going to work at all because we haven't built it yet that's what we're going to go do today at cmp attachments with derek so let's get this project started design build test go good to see you there you too olaf all right guys so we're with derek and olaf derek the owner olaf is the chief sales and derek i was just telling these guys a couple weeks ago you and i started to talk about the design for the monkey claw and we've been working through a couple different prototypes and i think you have something yeah we got something figured out for you all right cool let's check it out you want to check her out yes i do so this is dj right yep this is dj dj how you doing man good how are you good so this is the monkey claw this is it could you blow that up a little bit bigger dj so we can see it so what we did too is we uh added them replaceable edges on it so the design has just let's go over this real quick for these guys the design has three tines on the bottom and what what we were hoping to achieve by doing that was we wanted to have a larger surface area so that when we got more loose concrete material we'd have something but also by having the more tines here if we wanted to shake any of that dirt out we could do it and then we decided to go with two claws on the top and the reason we wanted to do that is as we had more loose material we wanted to be able to have something that could come down over the top and just grab on to them now do these each float separate so that if we have more material on one side oh perfect yeah so they they're so if you get a load that's uneven mm-hmm you'll be able to grab both sides of it perfect now what were you saying about the wear edges derek well the only thing that we're worried about is this it almost gets utilized like a fork and we brought these two pieces up and we're meeting and putting a weld one of the worries is is that's going to wear over time so we do feel if we put this in production that they should be a solid steel chunk that's milled down kind of like a fork yeah that way as it wears you can just keep it sharpening with a grinder but i think the first one for the prototype we're going to do it this way because it's easy and fast less machining but long term i think it's a part that we would have to be machining out and i see you've got replaceable teeth on the sides yeah we do that we started doing that on the rotating grapples and it's really nice when you have an investment to try to protect that investment as well and everybody has a different idea they don't maybe don't want teeth that's where we come out with a flat edge so we have options of giving people something different if they need it and then replaceable teeth on the top too right on the end there yes we're going to build them out of a ar 400 so it's an abrasion resistant material okay are the grapples actually activated by one cylinder two cylinders probably well actually blo what we did is we we we got rid of the guards all together and we're just uh we have a drain hole so material can come out the front but we kind of just got rid of it and made it so that really the whole cylinder is protected we thought of a guard but guards always seem to get bent and never fit good after you get done so this thing and we have the cylinders with steel tubes on them build right on and then the hoses will come out right out the sides trying to keep it simple but keep it durable so we're using rather than adding a guard we're creating strength in that whole time by making it part of the guard all in one sounds good in theory all right let's go meet spence nice to meet you dj thank you so this is where we're gonna be working for the day spence how you doing man nice to meet you so you've already got everything cut out so now we just gotta start the majority of this monkey claw will be made out of ar 200 and a combination of ar 400. the guys from cmp attachments had all of the parts pre-cut for us so that we could come in and start welding and assembling and putting everything together [Music] so i just got done pouring out the holes but spencer's putting the first of the forks together right now so here's the framework so here's a fun fact about spencer i found out he's derek's very first employee and been with the company longer than anybody else so this will be the bottom of the fork this is the top of the first time so i learned offhand that there's a few things that spencer likes to do and a few things that he does not mind handing off one of those things was boring out holes so anytime we had holes to pour out that became my job and rightfully salt because i'm pretty damn good at making things boring and if you guys are enjoying this video make sure to give it a big thumbs up and comment down below i love hearing from you guys i also learned that spencer is really good at fabricating he's got a knack for putting things together but he really does not like welding he'd rather try to figure out how to piece something new together than sit and weld all day long [Music] so at this point during the assembly everything is only getting tack welded after we know everything fits and works together it'll get fully welded before it's field [Music] um derrick and dj had a nice diagram drawn up so we could uh go off from that for the assembly but this is the first time that this thing has ever been put together so a lot of the concepts and ideas well the whole thing is basically nothing more than a concept that means that some of the things the way they were drawn on paper couldn't actually be applied in real life meaning we had some field modifications better well i bet it's worse fenders that doesn't matter all right uh we're doing good on time it's not even 11 right dang so we've already got the whole bottom already packed together what was the incident um we're gonna have to put a little bit off we're gonna cut a quarter inch up here and then round this off and get around that deal oh to get around the bracket yep okay makes sense i say that like i know what i'm talking about sure yes that makes sense just not in a group [Music] what do we before you lift it what are we doing we have to manufacture that bracket right now this brand so that we can put the cylinder to the upper grapple and we don't have it so we're gonna go build it so this is going to be the first of the top grapples this will be the protective shroud that surrounds the hydraulic cylinder protecting it from any loose debris so we want to get this to clear so we're actually going to put a camper on this so that we get this to blend into there does that make sense hopefully it does i also found out another fun fact about spence and that he really doesn't like grinding he doesn't mind handing that off so i got to do lots of grinding so what we're looking at right here is the top grapple flipped upside down so [Music] it's a little pressure so everything we're using here this is ar 200 that's ar 400 and everything else is made out of those two materials right correct quick attachment straight fifty bucks oh okay so the steel plate is fifty everything else is it like this right here yeah that was ar and crap just break off so one of the things we know we're going to probably end up doing is doing something with the end here correct right yep it's great for a test run but we're going to see where the weak point is whether it just wears here or does it create a stress fracture oopsie fence further back so we'll see about that but i got a question for you derek why did you mount the grapples in between the times was there nothing to your madness for that well first of all you're going to get a better grip on concrete because you got a platform here and here and also there's another reason and that's for us to manufacture it okay when you were putting this together all the holes and everything already jigged up for you oh yeah so like there's multiple things that go into it how it operates and how is the guy gonna put it together efficiently so we're looking at the more assets that we can use our cnc plasma cutters to position our holes just one last thing if this would move over no well it's not being supported by any well so imagine if you moved it over three inch you'd have to weld the ears onto it so and also too i think personally having this wider being on the outside it'll help keep it stable so if you put a piece of concrete all the way across you have it here for it to come up the further you have it out the more it's going to be supported okay [Music] an attachment that we use a lot is called the beak and that's made by daniel's manufacturing what i wanted to do was use all of the good things about that design but then add on to it areas that i think it could be changed or modified to fit what we do a little bit better i wanted a larger bottom plate a lot of times we're handling heavy materials but sometimes we're handling just bulky materials we need something we need more support on that bottom to be able to grab a larger variety of both heavy and small objects and talking about grabbing when i'm coming down or biting down on the material i wanted two grapples versus one that way i knew that when i grabbed down on the material i had a better purchase on it so as i'm trying to balance it in between houses and gates and fences i wouldn't worry about anything coming loose [Music] these are all stress proof bolts instead of one inch regular grade eight or stress proof stress yeah they're uh i mean a great a grade eight would work but uh stress proof can it's like kind of like ar but it's in a bolt form it'll it can handle like getting pushed on by a cylinder constantly without snapping yep yeah kind of like it can bend a little bit without just i'm paying close attention to detail because i haven't welded in a while and he's pushing not pulling the weld [Music] when i say i haven't welded in a while it's been 37 years since i've last welded in that circumstance you got to pull it but just because you can't i mean i guess i could have pushed it like this oh okay you can pull it if you want to but it looks a lot better after spence finds out i hadn't welded in 37 years he figured the best place for me to practice was on the underside of the top claw where as nobody can really see it and that way if we have to knock it out and start all over again and booger things up a little bit it won't look so poppy [Music] so i put on the green welding jacket i borrow a welding hood and i don't think i did that bad i'll have to show you how it turned on let you guys critique it yourself [Music] hmm [Music] okay you guys remember when i was grinding down the edges of these teeth we'll show you exactly why because he's got the grooves filled up with weld and now the camp will allow him to fit right here so it's not on the plan but spence and i have made an executive decision we're gonna cut because we've got here's the scoop we got this greaser on this pivot point and that's going to be embedded in here and inaccessible so we're going to cut in an access point on the top now we don't have to fish because before what i would have had to do is take it apart run it all the way up feel the zerk hold it there and then while my hand is in there trying to hold the grease zerk on right pump it up yeah not good no now we're not fishing so here's kind of an interesting thing this is like a bat a plasma vacuum and because the smoke from a plasma cutter doesn't really walk up and out it just kind of hovers is the way i understand it so they put this in and then it's got a giant filter right here and it just filters what it does so while he's cutting that's filtering that's pretty good for a free-handed [Music] so and all of this has to get do you double side it do you do both sides or do you do just one okay we're welding a solid all the way around wherever there is all right i'm gonna cut another piece of steel that go on the back side of the quick attack so when your pins come through on your skid loader yep uh it's not just prying on this little bit of space yeah it'll be on it'll be three quarters makes sense especially when we're going to be using as much fry force as we are with this [Music] [Applause] so everything is fully welded and now it's plumbing time so we've gotta mock up the plumbing first okay so we're gonna make hoses now spence okay so see that line right there yeah on the fitting line that up at the top of the die okay so right there yep okay and then put her in get crimp there's a bunch of like debris that gets inside the hoses gigantic filter so that when you put on your machine it's already cleaned okay so you're filtering it right now so filter and test so this will leak check it we're going to take all the hydraulic fluid all the contaminants that may have gotten into that cylinder and it's going into a giant filter over here and we'll see if it's gonna work here we how are we doing on the hose pinching not bad huh yeah not too bad cut them out more i feel like so even fully up we can't get at them so what do we got to do like gotta round out these holes right here does that mean we got to get the plasma torch going are we gonna have to protect the cylinder underneath take the cylinder out probably yeah okay so we're switching over from straight razors to 45 so that we can hook the grease gun on it that way maybe we don't have the plasma cut out the holes a little bit more we're also in the process of taking out putting thinner bolts and nuts onto the bolts okay we're not even out of the gate yet but spence i already see a couple things they should do on version 2.0 if you look at all of these small fittings right here that's right we're right in the work zone that's gonna that's gonna get hit pretty fast it's not gonna take very long before we crunch that up got a plan for that already too oh you do all right oh you guys talked about it i like that i think we got to modify that pin too correct because otherwise out in the field these guys are going to be disassembling that hose that this but you want to move that in the first place yeah i think this time it's going to end up being dominant a little faster because the hoses are shorter so oil's going to want to go to that side before that one so we almost got to take that and move it to the center and build a nice guard take this whole system right here build a nice guard with a step on it right here oh yeah and then have the guard in the step all one yeah and then have the hose maybe come out with just holes um holders and then come out and we need a hose holder correct yeah we need to mount something that managed i don't i don't like having them on the machine correct i like having a separate dedicated hose holder spence welded on a hose keeper here we've got a guard bracket put on there got anything we could pick up we got some rocks on the back let's do it thanks derek oh you do have boulders perfect so here's the good and bad that i'm seeing about the design those top grapples have a slight hook at the end and that's excellent at grabbing onto boulders and not letting them escape but that also limits the size of the boulder so if i wanted to grab a five or a six foot boulder that grapple may not be able to fully grasp all the way around it derek's already practicing his boulder wall placement you're in on one ear we built it heavy enough to handle some pretty nasty stuff but oh you only got half these oh that's my hat angle but there you go now you're right but could it do the detail work that we wanted it to do then that's the next thing to test all right guys we got the new monkey claw on nice big flat enough part that we can pick up a lot of the small [Music] that's locked in and that's all that's all a little garbage all right how is she gonna do with the smaller stuff clamp down all right let's see what you grab let's see if you got enough pull back there you go yup bring it in fold it under there you go so he's trying to grab that whole liner all at once yeah it's a nice metal liner so what alex is trying to do is instead of gouge the ground he's trying to pick everything off from the ground kind of like you reach down with your hand and pick the garbage up and off scoop and grab some grass and turf and whatever else is underneath it he's being pretty strategic about how he uses that only reason i say that is because if you're wondering why we're doing it this way well now you know a lot of guys be like oh just scoop underneath it and go yeah that's how you get dirt you see we don't have any dirt that's a pretty clean load there was no dirt dirty garbage [Music] be nice if the camera would stay mounted you can pick up more boulder and that's got the counterweight kit on it what do you think i like it actually why do you say it like that i don't know i just do you normally not like what you guys build yeah sometimes um i ran it pretty hard because realistically like um olaf was he was being nice to it yeah but uh probably somebody that you're paying in like production you're gonna go you're gonna grab into you're gonna get into work yeah only thing i can see is we need a hose by a hose keeper yeah so this is gonna be bad this all of this i definitely it's no good it works good i mean it's so protected because one thing i noticed with rocks is they never even get up that far um yeah i don't know i like it i'm just always used to using a rotating grapple for rocks i've never tried to move anything with a skid loader if you guys got suggestions for attachments comments down below i'm guessing you're going to read the comments of the video there oh for sure yeah this is the guy he actually him and i came up with this design together yup and dj and dj and dj can't forget dj dj is his head engineer and spence and all the team at cmp i want to thank these guys awesome experience coming to your building now it's the next nut level is giving it a go out in the field so hit that subscribe button and hopefully we'll see on the next one god bless you guys go get them