Tiltrotator at work -benefits & drawbacks

All right, guys. Today we're talking about a tilt rotator. And this is an attachment that goes onto the end of an excavator and dramatically changes its function, capability, and performance. Now, they've been using these things over in Europe for a long time. And if you go to Sweden, they use them on almost 100% of their machines for the last 20 to 30 plus years. But these things are just starting to trickle into North America. And a lot of guys have questions. So today we're going to look closely at one called the steel wrist. We're also going to analyze the benefits and what some of the the drawbacks when you hook your machine up to one of these are. And then we're going to actually show you one in action, what they're capable of doing and how they can dramatically change the face of an excavator. So without wasting any more time, let's go tilt rotate some stuff. There's got to be a better way of saying headquarters and what we're going to be talking with Matt by the way. Hi there. And Matt, what do you do with Provob? I am product manager for excavators. This year I'm focusing more on the wheel. Before that, I was the crawlers. So, I've got experience on both ends. What we're going to be showing you guys is what I consider to be pretty much the next level. One of those got to have it for an excavator. There's always these tools that come along that you don't think you need and then you make the mistake of going out and trying it once and you're like, "How did I live without that?" Or so long. I mean, the steel wrist is something that's been over in Sweden for about 25 30 years. Y uh we have brought it over before cuz there wasn't so much demand, but right now it seems to be a shift going on in the United States and people are getting used to trying out the steel wrist. Uh, generically it's called a tilt rotator. Okay. And it gives you the ability to spin your bucket 360, knuckle it over 45 either way. And generally they can be outfitted with kind of a claw on the back so you can pick up objects. So we're going over here to the excavator hill and we're going to try out an ECR 235 excavator with our steel wrist attachment. So tilt rotator. Is that actually a brand? That's actually the generic term. The generic term. Okay. So that's so if you guys aren't familiar with it and you hear that that's not a brand name. That's the generic term of what they call these. Steel wrist is the brand that we're going to be running today. Right. That's the one that we're partnered with. Okay. So that's the brand that you're going to be seeing in operation on today's job site. But these things have been around for 30 years in Sweden. They're different generations, but that's when the first ones came out. And I think it was one family that started off and they've actually fragmented a little bit. So, I know there's three or four companies who are designing them right now. This is our standard unit, one of them. This is a short swing ECR 145. This is a pin grabber quick attach. Okay. Uh, it's not the Volvo one. The Volvo has an S coupler that behind us is a steel wrist. It has a quick coupler. In fact, it actually has two. If you get up close to the front, you can take a look. You have the standard quick coupler used to drop your attachment and pick it up. Okay. And then you have a second one up here for the entire steel wrist itself. So if you got into a situation where you just needed absolutely all of the lifting ability or perhaps you just didn't need the rotating and swivel functions at the time, you could drop the bucket to one side, disconnect these two lines, move the electrical cord over, then you can drop the steel wrist itself and pick the bucket back up or another attachment. Okay. So, one thing that I want to point out that Matt said if you need all of the capabilities of the machine there is there was a little bit of controversy over losing some breakout force when you add attachments to the end of the boom arm. But what happens pretty quickly is the guys realize the advanced capabilities of the machine far outweigh a slight loss in breakout performance. I mean, and as a guy that I've ran excavators my entire life, there are times when that extra breakout force is a little handy. And I've ran excavators that you got that switch where you can get that extra power, but I'll tell you straight up, Matt, I probably use that switch twice a season. Like I'm like, "Yeah, today I'll use that switch and never again." And then maybe four months later, I think I'll try. So losing the breakout force is if you're going to be thinking about the tradeoff, I would think losing the breakout force is a minor for me a minor thing in comparison to the flexibility comparison to what you can do with it. You've got a standard dirt bucket over and you've got no attach no quick attachment system on that one. Right, that's bend on. There's no quick attachment system. And what you're getting with this is 100% of the machine's capability. Meaning that all of the all of the power, strength, everything that this machine is designed to do is is right here because it's straight pinned right to the boom. Now, if we switch over here, you can see that you've got extra girth right here at the end of the boom arm. And what this does is this is what we're talking about translates to a slight loss of power. And then over here is a quick attach system on the next machine over. And you can see that this doesn't have quite as much at the end of it. So even with this, you do suffer just a titch and in a loss of performance. But again, if you're really that much of a I don't know, I shouldn't say a diva, but if you're that much of a diva about your equipment, it's going to make a difference. Now, the buckets, Matt, let's take a look at this. This is a general purpose bucket from and you can take a look just based on the fact that the side plates here are only coming up half as high as compared to the one you have over there. So this is general purpose and this is going to be the same steel we use on the loader buckets or the rock truck beds. Okay, a hard steel. It has about 40% coverage. That's why it's a general purpose bucket. The one over there with the full chevrons actually has more plates on the bottom, higher coverage on the sides. So you've got about 80% coverage of those hard steel plates on that one. So that's the heavy duty bucket. So if you're doing rocks, quarry type of work, that's good for it. This one is more of a dirt rating bucket. And this particular bucket actually came from steel wrist itself. So it's designed specifically for their attachment. Okay. So that was something that I wanted to ask you is I have noticed that when you're operating these tilt rotator type of attachments. I've seen this bucket used more often than not because this bucket takes advantage of all of the capabilities of a piece of equipment. Am I right? Absolutely. Okay. Now, not to say that you can't use that. If we walked over to the other side of the pile, I had three buckets lined up for a smaller machine that we don't have use of today. But one of them was an incredibly narrow trenching bucket. Another one was a standard dirt bucket that has teeth on it. Okay. And the third one was this wide facing grading bucket. Has the flat edge on the front so you can make a smooth pass when you're done. Some of the ones with teeth or when you're trying to dig into really hard material, you haven't used it before. Need to plunge in with the teeth to break it free. If you're doing trench work, cleanup work, things like that, you're trying to smooth dirt out, move it quickly. So something wide and flat like this gets the job done. Heat up Heat. Heat. Heat up You know what? So, one of the things that I'm picking up is there is a learning curve with these things that uh it's just like any piece of equipment. You've got to get used to it before you can get efficient with it. I've never ran a steel wrist before, but I'll tell you straight up after I ran it for 10 minutes and already it's starting to get intuitive. Not right away. At first it feels a little bit different, but then after you kind of go, "Oh yeah, now I get a whole I'm used to this button. I'm used to that button." I can see where maybe a day, maybe a day, and you could be dangerous with it. And in about a week, you're going to be efficient with it. You're going to be like, "Oh, wow. that I could see where that's going to have uh that that little bit. It's not a big learning curve. I would I was thinking it was going to be a little bit harder to to pick it up, but it really isn't. At least not the way that it's set up in this machine. With this machine, everything is right on your joysticks. Your thumbs do both thumbs operate the tilt, the rotate. This finger rotates your grapple. Um that's it. It's as simple as that. [Music] [Applause]