Soil Compactor

[BrentD]

I'm planning on building a soil compactor and have a couple of decisions to make before I begin. So far, what I have to work with is an old pressure tank from a water well, (one of the ones that is about 5 feet tall and about 2 and a half feet in diameter) a pair of old wheel bearings / hubs from my Pontiac Aztek (they were replaced just for good measure as I had a suspicious noise on one side and the bearings are prone to problems. Turned out to be a bad CV joint though).

I stopped by the nearest scrap metal dealer today and the bulk of their "secondary" material was large structural I-Beam in 6' to 10' sections. They also had a long piece of 1/4"(maybe 3/16") x2"x6" rectangular tubing. The I-Beam looked to be probably 3/8" or thicker. I could probably make the frame for the compactor out of either material, but I'm thinking the rectangular material might be easier to work with. I guess the question is, what will hold up the best?

They also had several long sections of solid 2" square stock and an octagonal stock that looked to also be about 2-2.5" across at the widest part. I'm thinking about getting some of that, cutting to about 4" lengths and welding the pieces in rows that spiral around the outside of the pressure tank to act as "sheep feet". This bring up another question... Would I be better served welding the pieces so that they stick straight out from the surface of the pressure tank or would it work better to maybe cut smaller pieces and weld them so a long side is agains the tank? (Short side would probably be easier to weld.) I ask that question because all the sheep's foot compactor's I've seen have larger flat pieces at the end of each "foot" that sticks out from the main drum.

Still not sure how I'm going to couple the hubs to the compactor, but I'd like the to be removable so they can be replaced in the future if needed.

 

[GT2]

I'm planning on building a soil compactor and have a couple of decisions to make before I begin. So far, what I have to work with is an old pressure tank from a water well, (one of the ones that is about 5 feet tall and about 2 and a half feet in diameter) a pair of old wheel bearings / hubs from my Pontiac Aztek (they were replaced just for good measure as I had a suspicious noise on one side and the bearings are prone to problems. Turned out to be a bad CV joint though).

I stopped by the nearest scrap metal dealer today and the bulk of their "secondary" material was large structural I-Beam in 6' to 10' sections. They also had a long piece of 1/4"(maybe 3/16") x2"x6" rectangular tubing. The I-Beam looked to be probably 3/8" or thicker. I could probably make the frame for the compactor out of either material, but I'm thinking the rectangular material might be easier to work with. I guess the question is, what will hold up the best?

They also had several long sections of solid 2" square stock and an octagonal stock that looked to also be about 2-2.5" across at the widest part. I'm thinking about getting some of that, cutting to about 4" lengths and welding the pieces in rows that spiral around the outside of the pressure tank to act as "sheep feet". This bring up another question... Would I be better served welding the pieces so that they stick straight out from the surface of the pressure tank or would it work better to maybe cut smaller pieces and weld them so a long side is agains the tank? (Short side would probably be easier to weld.) I ask that question because all the sheep's foot compactor's I've seen have larger flat pieces at the end of each "foot" that sticks out from the main drum.

Still not sure how I'm going to couple the hubs to the compactor, but I'd like the to be removable so they can be replaced in the future if needed.

Here's the build I did, might give you some ideas.
http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/build-yourself/138884-rolling-compactor-project.html

 

[BrentD]

Excellent pics in your thread. I remember seeing that thread before but didn't remember that you built the tongue out of channel. I may end up changing my design slightly once I go back to the scrap dealer. I think they had some channel in their pile too. I'm not sure about the I-Beam. That may just be too heavy and difficult to work with.

 

[Taylortractornut]

I used to get the dread job in the winter building up sheeps foot roller studs where I worked. Some had sollid round rods but the the ones that needed the tops on were hollow square feet and the flange was uesd to weld to and keep the soil from eroding the weld. also it helped cut down on the passes pacing to. Most Ive been around have a tapered foot with a small ring of pipe welded on top for a dimple to hold a little bit of soil when packing to cut down on the wear. One other thing on the small of a drum 4 inch feet without being sharply tapered will want to disturb the more when the feet sink in and the wheel rolls up and the ground will fluff up.
Look at a Rammax trench compactor feet and that Hoelscher lug roller and see the types of feet. I have put feet onto a 2 foot skid steer loader roller I rebuilt a few years ago that had 2 inch tubing 2 inches hi for the feet.

 

[BrentD]

Ok, attached is a (very poorly drawn) mock-up of my idea for the drum. I'm thinking that it is probably better to take sections of the 2" square bar stock and cut pieces about 4" long, bend them slightly to match the contour of the drum and lay them out in rows as shown in the image. (Only one row of many is shown in the image.) If necessary I can bevel the edges of each "foot".

Does adding feet like this really contribute anything useful to the design or would I be better served leaving the drum flat? (I'm going to primarily be using this drum during the construction of a pond and dam. I will be pulling it either with the Montana 4340C or our Mitsubishi BD2G dozer.)

 

[Scotty370]

Brent- Certainly anything that you put on the circumferance of the drum is going to to add PSI to the roller as you reduce surface contact. But wouldn't you be better off putting, say 1/4"x2" bar stock across it from right to left, and then weld your 2x2x3" feet to that? That way you could put a bar across every 6" or so with feet sticking out every 6"? and use as many cross bar as you need to go around the roller. If you carefully attach the ends of the bars to each end of the roller, they could be removed for a 'lawn' roller in the future. Also, welding a 2x2x3" foot to the 'skin' of the tank, seems tricky! Whatever you do, the key to compaction would be lots of compaction 'sessions', in 'small' 3"-4" (6"?) "lifts" ! Just thinkin' ~Scotty

 

[Taylortractornut]

Brent thats a good I dea Bobcats skid steer drum is set up like yours with a tube like piece bent that way. And it does help tremendously when packing soil it kneads out air pockets. I back filled a water treatment plant under ground tank one time that was 65 feet deap and 150 feet across well the tank was 100 that left 25 on ech side to work around. I ran a dozer between the tank and the bank and would spread 8 inch lifts of soil all the way around then drive a 70 hp tractor down there and ride in circles for 10 minutes and the compactor would be tip toeing.

 

[bx24]

Check out this commercial model

Hoelscher Commercial Products - TL Roller (with video!)

 

[BrentD]

Check out this commercial model

Hoelscher Commercial Products - TL Roller (with video!)

Yeah, I found that one via google images. It helped me visualize the placement of the "feet" on the drum. The land where I'll be using this compactor is very sandy. The pond area has marginal clay mix. It held water reasonable well before the original dam broke and it was never compacted during the original construction so I'm hoping as I reconstruct the dam and deepen the pond using the compactor will help things out a little more. I think feet as thick as those on the Hoelscher compactor might end up causing me some "fluffing" problems but the shorter feet I'm planning on will probably be a good balance. (Besides, the scrap dealer has a lot of the solid square stock so I know I can get plenty of that.)

I'm taking the truck back to the scrap dealer's tomorrow to pick up what I need.

 

[BrentD]

Brent- Certainly anything that you put on the circumferance of the drum is going to to add PSI to the roller as you reduce surface contact. But wouldn't you be better off putting, say 1/4"x2" bar stock across it from right to left, and then weld your 2x2x3" feet to that? That way you could put a bar across every 6" or so with feet sticking out every 6"? and use as many cross bar as you need to go around the roller. If you carefully attach the ends of the bars to each end of the roller, they could be removed for a 'lawn' roller in the future. Also, welding a 2x2x3" foot to the 'skin' of the tank, seems tricky! Whatever you do, the key to compaction would be lots of compaction 'sessions', in 'small' 3"-4" (6"?) "lifts" ! Just thinkin' ~Scotty

This is an intriguing idea... I suppose I could get some angle iron and put some "ears" on each end so I could bolt them to the tank and then have the "feet" attached to the angle iron. Might not have to bend them to fit the tank's curve that way. Would have to weld the "studs" to the tank since I don't know how to make a bolt hole waterproof, and I'll probably be filling the tank with water.

I was planning on bending the feet with a tubing bender slightly modified to handle the square stock.