Bucket (machine part)

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A bucket (also called a scoop to qualify shallower designs of tools) is a specialized container attached to a machine, as compared to a bucket adapted for manual use by a human being. It is a bulk material handling component.

Contents

The bucket has an inner volume as compared to other types of machine attachments like blades or shovels.

The bucket could be attached to the lifting hook of a crane, at the end of the arm of an excavating machine, to the wires of a dragline excavator, to the arms of a power shovel or a tractor equipped with a backhoe loader or to a loader, or to a dredge.

The name "bucket" may have been coined from buckets used in water wheels, or used in water turbines or in similar-looking devices.

Purposes

Buckets in mechanical engineering can have a distinct quality from the traditional bucket (pail) whose purpose is to contain things. Larger versions of this type of bucket equip bucket trucks to contain human beings, buckets in water-hauling systems in mines or, for instance, in helicopter buckets to hold water to combat fires.

Two other types of mechanical buckets can be distinguished according to the final destination of the device they equip: energy-consumer systems like excavators or energy-capturer systems like water bucket wheels or turbines.

Size and shape

Buckets exist in a variety of sizes or shapes. They can be quite large like those equipping Hulett cranes, used to discharge ore out of cargo ships in harbours or very small such as those used by deep-sea exploration vehicles.

The shape of the bucket can vary from the truncated conical shape of an actual bucket to more scoop-like or spoon-like shapes akin to water turbines. The cross section can be round or square.

Three miners are extracted during the Farmington Mine disaster, in a bucket attached to a crane Farmington-Mine-Disaster-rescue.jpg
Three miners are extracted during the Farmington Mine disaster, in a bucket attached to a crane

Designs

Simple design

This is the same shape of a domestic form, the one-piece-standing single element, but often with an augmented size.

Mining

In early developments of mining, a large simple bucket allowed easy insertion of both miners and construction materials such as pit props, and later extraction of miners and ore. Common terms used in various parts of the world include: Bowk; Kibble; Hoppit; Hoppet. Latterly they have been called sinking buckets, as they are now only used when sinking new mine shafts before insertion of the cage, or for emergency rescue. [1]

Concrete bucket

Concrete bucket on a crane Betonkorb.JPG
Concrete bucket on a crane

A concrete bucket delivers concrete by means of a tower crane. It has a bottom opening to allow concrete to flow out when in-place. See also tremie.

Boom truck bucket

A boom truck (or “bucket truck” bucket is an aerial work platform placed at the end of an excavator-like arm which allows a man to be hoisted to do construction work, such as tree pruning and electrical line maintenance. When necessary the bucket is made out of a non-conductive material for safety. A construction site man lift is a similar apparatus. There may be a door on the side of the bucket in either.

Excavator bucket

Excavator buckets are made of solid steel and generally present teeth protruding from the cutting edge, to disrupt hard material and avoid wear-and-tear of the bucket. Subsets of the excavator bucket are: the ditching bucket, trenching bucket, A ditching bucket is a wider bucket with no teeth, 5–6 feet (1.52–1.83 m) used for excavating larger excavations and grading stone. A trenching excavator bucket is normally 6 to 24 in (152 to 610 mm) wide and with protruding teeth.

Bucket crusher

A bucket crusher or crusher bucket is a type of jaw crusher. It's an attached tool for excavators for built-in crushing construction waste and demolition materials.

Screening bucket

The screening bucket is an attachment for the excavators, loaders, skid steers and backhoe loaders that helps the selection of natural material for different purposes at the jobsite.

Clamshell bucket

Clamshell buckets from a retired coal-loading crane, now displayed at a dock re-development in Cardiff Coal loading shell grabs, Cardiff.jpg
Clamshell buckets from a retired coal-loading crane, now displayed at a dock re-development in Cardiff

The clamshell bucket is a more sophisticated articulated several-piece device, including two elementary buckets associated on a hinged structure forming a claws-like appendage with an internal volume.

Buckets-wheel

In mining

The design is used in bucket-wheel excavators. The buckets in the wheel have to be made of solid material to withstand the resistance of the material it cuts through.[ citation needed ]

In water hoisting

In energy production

The bucket wheel design is also used to capture the water energy in water-wheels or water turbines like Pelton wheels. The buckets also have to be made of solid material to withstand the force of the water flow. Their shape is optimized according to their purpose. Other designs include vertical shaft wind turbines designs like on the Savonius wind turbine. In this case, the buckets have to be made of a light material.

Buckets-ladders (buckets-chains)

The buckets-ladders are used in bucket elevators or in the dredge design of some dredgers.

Images

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pelton wheel</span> Type of turbine

The Pelton wheel or Pelton Turbine is an impulse-type water turbine invented by American inventor Lester Allan Pelton in the 1870s. The Pelton wheel extracts energy from the impulse of moving water, as opposed to water's dead weight like the traditional overshot water wheel. Many earlier variations of impulse turbines existed, but they were less efficient than Pelton's design. Water leaving those wheels typically still had high speed, carrying away much of the dynamic energy brought to the wheels. Pelton's paddle geometry was designed so that when the rim ran at half the speed of the water jet, the water left the wheel with very little speed; thus his design extracted almost all of the water's impulse energy—which made for a very efficient turbine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Water turbine</span> Type of turbine

A water turbine is a rotary machine that converts kinetic energy and potential energy of water into mechanical work.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Skid-steer loader</span> Compact heavy equipment with differential steering

A skid loader, skid-steer loader, SSL, or skidsteer is any of a class of compact heavy equipment with lift arms that can attach to a wide variety of buckets and other labor-saving tools or attachments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shovel</span> Tool for digging, lifting, and moving bulk materials

A shovel is a tool used for digging, lifting, and moving bulk materials, such as soil, coal, gravel, snow, sand, or ore.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Excavator</span> Type of construction equipment

Excavators are heavy construction equipment consisting of a boom, dipper, bucket and cab on a rotating platform known as the "house". The house sits atop an undercarriage with tracks or wheels. They are a natural progression from the steam shovels and often mistakenly called power shovels, as power shovels may have similar looking buckets. All movement and functions of a hydraulic excavator are accomplished through the use of hydraulic fluid, with hydraulic cylinders and hydraulic motors. Due to the linear actuation of hydraulic cylinders, their mode of operation is fundamentally different from cable-operated excavators, which use winches and steel ropes to accomplish the movements.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bucket</span> Open top watertight container

A bucket is typically a watertight, vertical cylinder or truncated cone or square, with an open top and a flat bottom, attached to a semicircular carrying handle called the bail.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Loader (equipment)</span> Heavy equipment machine

A loader is a heavy equipment machine used in construction to move or load materials such as soil, rock, sand, demolition debris, etc. into or onto another type of machinery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Backhoe</span> Type excavating equipment (vehicle)

A backhoe—also called rear actor or back actor—is a type of excavating equipment, or digger, consisting of a digging bucket on the end of a two-part articulated arm. It is typically mounted on the back of a tractor or front loader, the latter forming a "backhoe loader". The section of the arm closest to the vehicle is known as the boom, while the section that carries the bucket is known as the dipper, both terms derived from steam shovels. The boom, which is the long piece of the backhoe arm attached to the tractor through a pivot called the king-post, is located closest to the cab. It allows the arm to pivot left and right, typically through a range of 180 to 200 degrees, and also enables lifting and lowering movements.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Backhoe loader</span> Heavy equipment vehicle

A backhoe loader, also called a loader backhoe, loader excavator, tractor excavator, digger or colloquially shortened to backhoe within the industry, is a heavy equipment vehicle that consists of a tractor-like unit fitted with a loader-style shovel/bucket on the front and a backhoe on the back. Due to its (relatively) small size and versatility, backhoe loaders are very common in urban engineering and small construction projects as well as developing countries. This type of machine is similar to and derived from what is now known as a TLB (Tractor-Loader-Backhoe), which is to say, an agricultural tractor fitted with a front loader and rear backhoe attachment.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dragline excavator</span> Piece of heavy equipment used in civil engineering and surface mining

A dragline excavator is a piece of heavy equipment used in civil engineering and surface mining.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hulett</span> Ore unloader used in the Great Lakes of North America

The Hulett was an ore unloader that was widely used on the Great Lakes of North America. It was unsuited to tidewater ports because it could not adjust for rising and falling tides, although one was used in New York City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dredging</span> Excavation of sediment, usually under water

Dredging is the excavation of material from a water environment. Possible reasons for dredging include improving existing water features; reshaping land and water features to alter drainage, navigability, and commercial use; constructing dams, dikes, and other controls for streams and shorelines; and recovering valuable mineral deposits or marine life having commercial value. In all but a few situations the excavation is undertaken by a specialist floating plant, known as a dredger.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steam shovel</span> Steam-powered excavation machine

A steam shovel is a large steam-powered excavating machine designed for lifting and moving material such as rock and soil. It is the earliest type of power shovel or excavator. Steam shovels played a major role in public works in the 19th and early 20th century, being key to the construction of railroads and the Panama Canal. The development of simpler, cheaper diesel, gasoline and electric shovels caused steam shovels to fall out of favor in the 1930s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bucket-wheel excavator</span> Heavy mining excavator

A bucket-wheel excavator (BWE) is a large heavy equipment machine used in surface mining.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Power shovel</span> Bucket-equipped machine used for digging and loading earth

A power shovel, also known as a motor shovel, stripping shovel, front shovel, mining shovel or rope shovel, is a bucket-equipped machine usually powered by steam, diesel fuel, gasoline or electricity and used for digging and loading earth or fragmented rock and for mineral extraction. Power shovels are a type of rope/cable excavator, where the digging arm is controlled and powered by winches and steel ropes, rather than hydraulics like in the modern hydraulic excavators. Basic parts of a power shovel include the track system, cabin, cables, rack, stick, boom foot-pin, saddle block, boom, boom point sheaves and bucket. The size of bucket varies from 0.73 to 53 cubic meters.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tata Hitachi Construction Machinery</span> Indian construction equipment company

Tata Hitachi Construction Machinery Company Pvt Ltd or THCMC is an India-based joint venture company between Tata Motors of India and Hitachi Construction Machinery of Japan. It was previously known as Telco Construction Equipment Co. Ltd. or Telcon for short.

ENMTP is an Algerian company specializing in the development, manufacture and distribution of machinery used in public works. It has registered capital of 15.6 billion DA and is 100% owned by the state.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">P&H Mining</span>

P&H Mining Equipment designs, builds and supports a line of drilling and material handling machinery marketed under the "P&H" trademark and applied to minerals and energy surface mining operations worldwide. The firm is an operating subsidiary of Joy Global Inc. In 2017 Joy Global Inc. was acquired by Komatsu Limited of Tokyo, Japan, and is now known as Komatsu Mining Corporation and operates as a subsidiary of Komatsu.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bucket chain excavator</span> Heavy equipment used in surface mining and dredging

A bucket chain excavator (BCE) is a piece of heavy equipment used in surface mining and dredging. BCEs use buckets on a revolving chain to remove large quantities of material. They are similar to bucket-wheel excavators and trenchers. Bucket chain excavators remove material from below their plane of movement, which is useful if the pit floor is unstable or underwater.

References

  1. "Coalface terms: H". Caolface Glossary. Retrieved 16 September 2011.