I wrote recently about the biggest digging project we’ve had on the land that we used our home build excavator for. Since the trenching was completed, the next few steps turned out to be much more complicated than I had planned for. Not difficult. Just complicated. It starts with the story of the AC 220V…
Finishing up the trenching with the excavator
K’Tanawat has been using the excavator for a number of days now to dig a very long trench from the main electrical box all the way to BaanRimNaam. We learned a lot about making the soil softer to make the digging go faster along the way. There were also a few distractions, so we paused…
Wet soil is easier to dig
I guess I always knew that wet soil is easier to dig with a shovel. Apparently it is easier to dig with an excavator also. K’Tanawat has been digging the long trench from the front of the land to BaanRimNaam and the going has been slow and tough. Until he tried using a hose to…
Installing a water overflow pipe for the pond
Yesterday, K’Tanawat finished digging the trench for the water overflow pipe in the pond. The idea is that there should be a pipe at exactly the height such that if the water level in the pond ever gets over this level, we want the excess to dump out into the canal bordering our land. We…
Knuckling the excavator
In my previous post, I showed some pictures of a trench dig with our DIY excavator. I just thought I would post up some pictures of how the machine crawls around the land. I still think this is one of the funnier aspects of this machine, since it doesn’t have powered wheels. Instead, it crawls…
Digging a trench with our DIY excavator
As some of you might remember, we built our own DIY excavator back in May/June of last year. Since then, it hasn’t gotten much use. The main reason for this is that the workers that we’ve hired are more familiar digging with hand tools than with the excavator, so they seem to avoid using it….
Excavator upgrade: hydraulic flow limiters
Testing out the hydraulic flow limiters When we finished building the excavator a while back, it worked fine but seemed to move a bit too quickly on some of the directions. At best, I had to be very careful to barely open the valves, but at worst it was dangerous to anyone or anything nearby….
How fast does the excavator crawl?
So how fast does this excavator with no drive capability crawl? First, bear in mind that it really does crawl. Literally. It moves by lifting up the arm, extending it out, putting it down, then pulling itself forwards. And repeat. Second, bear in mind that this process is really slow. (Third, please bear in mind…
Excavator update: It’s alive!
Busy week last week. A lot going on at work. So I didn’t have a chance to post these pictures of the first working test of the excavator until now. Last week, we finally got the hydraulic hoses and the coupling between the engine and the hydraulic pump purchased and installed. We even painted the…
Excavator fully assembled
The assembly of the excavator is mostly complete now. The welding is done. The hydraulic pistons are mounted on their bushings. Engine, hydraulic pump, and hydraulic tank are all mounted. We were unable to easily source the bucket teeth yet, but we welded on thick pieces of metal that we may grind down to sharpen…
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