We've sold hundreds of the CA compact grapple with a 30" opening. They still have the same opening today.
We started with a 30" opening for the Wicked Grapple and produced happy customers for 2+ years.
Island Tractor starts a fuss.....
The 54-72" single and double lid Wicked Grapples were enhanced to open to 37" for those wanting MORE!
The 50" Wicked Grapple has a 30" opening and always has.
It is perfect for small tractors. It's one of our best sellers. It's solid. It ain't broke. We ain't fixing it!!
Travis
Well, I'm really not pissing on the EA compact and mid size grapples, just exploring why they have a smaller opening than many other similar grapples. You know very well that I've been an admirer of the EA grapples. However, I assume you'd like to improve the product going forward even if it is "perfect" already just as Mercedes and Boeing and Apple and Kubota do. If another grapple company manages to include a desirable feature in a competitive model I'd think you guys would want to at least match them.
If you look back in this thread you will see that I was not the one who brought up the opening width issue. In fact I was rather surprised to learn of it and couldn't figure out why the opening of the EA compact was so much smaller. I do appreciate that for a BX 30" is all you'd really want or be able to use but the grapple is rated to 35hp so someone with a true CUT rather than SCUT might well want a larger opening. Yes, you do have the 54" which is an improvement but why doesn't that one open as wide as my older 48" grapple?
Again, it was potential customers, not I, who raised this issue almost from the start. I only became aware of it and interested in the geometry after others brought it to my attention. The 54" with its 37" opening is perhaps the "Mark II" version and a great addition to the line but it seems that at least some of your customers would value an even wider opening. I can say that I've never wished my opening width was less than the 44" I have and that width has been important to getting some bulky items like stumps and big logs into the grapple. As noted earlier, it isn't an issue for grapples aimed at the BX SCUT size tractor but even my CK20, which is identical to the CT122 Ted used to torture test your 50" compact, made good use of the extra 14" of opening even though the lift capacity was "only" 1070lbs. See the photo below of my CK20 wide open gathering debris on the ground or grabbing hold of an awkward stump. Your EA50 and 54 would have trouble with these tasks only because of opening width.
In your followup post you indicate that the reasons for not making the opening wider were to avoid increased weight and extending the center of gravity. Those are both valid concerns but need to be balanced against the increased utility of having a wider opening. Indeed, having a wider opening can allow a large bulky item to be "swallowed" deeper by the grapple so that the center of gravity is actually further aft. And, extending the cylinder stroke or cylinder and lid pivot mounts (as on my Millonzi) would seem to add very little weight. Ask yourself a hypothetical question: "Would our customers rather have a grapple that opened 7-14" wider even if it added five or ten pounds to grapple weight and reduced net lift capacity by ten to twenty pounds?". You guys run a CAD driven ?water or ?plasma metal cutter so really you could even offer the extended opening as an extra cost option that would actually cost you very little extra to fabricate. Just play in CAD with the geometric changes to opening associated with moving the various cylinder and lid pivot points or, perhaps a bigger deal, just lengthen the upper lid a few inches and mount it on higher posts. You wouldn't need to touch the bottom or back of the grapple.
Necessity is the mother of invention. The only criticisms I've seen of your compact grapples are the opening width and cost. One of those can be easily fixed!
