teeth cut off backhoe bucket best options?

[RickB]

People that know what they are doing cut shanks off edges every day.

 

[BukitCase]

NYONE has most of the correct answer, and you already have most of what's needed - if your Pm65 came with a scarfing tip, you're there. Once you've used a scarfing tip on a plasma you may never wanna use carbon arc again. Two main reasons: Quite a bit more "surgical" control, and no need to wear ear plugs AND muffs so you can still HEAR when you're done.

That was MY reaction the first time I used the scarfing tip on my PM45; yours is bigger, it's possible you could get enough weld out of the way to get what's left of the shanks off with a hammer and chisel, or an air hammer/chisel.

It's too bad your shanks (the part new teeth get pinned onto) got cut off, or you could do what I did on my 2' bucket - the previous owner had kept digging after teeth came off the shanks, so the old shanks would no longer support new teeth...

I went around each shank weld with a thin cutoff disk, watching carefully NOT to go deeper than the surface of the cutting edge of bucket - First, vertically using the side of the shank as a guide, then 90 degree cuts with the disk nearly parallel to the cutting edge surface - once that was done, I smacked each shank a couple times with an 8 lb. hammer and they popped right off. (This was BEFORE I got the plasma -)

Once those shanks were out of the way, it was fairly easy to grind the remaining weld beads down flush to the cutting edge. New shanks welded back on, new teeth pinned back on, done.

If I had that job to do over, and knowing how well the plaz works with a scarfing tip, it'd be a no-brainer... Steve

 

[disney]

I’d cut the whole cutting edge off the bottom and replace it or if I didn’t want to go through that much work I’d just weld new teeth beside the old ones.

Any teeth would be better than no teeth, but they should be at the edge of the bucket, and leaving the 'stumps' would make it hard to cut through much of anything, so they really would have to go... but I did not think about removing the entire bottom edge, but thought that would be plan B.

Thank you to all who responded, I ended up removing all the pieces today.

I did not use a stop watch, but would guess a few hours. The center pair of the upper/inside came right off. The bottom four were harder, as I ended up having to use a cut off wheel to cut a grove just below the bucket lip/edge to give me somewhere to start the chisel. The upper/outside pair took as long, or longer than all else combined! A few neighbors thought I found religion, not because I was swearing 'Jesus', but when hitting the bucket sometimes it would ring like a church bell!

 

[California]

The center pair of the upper/inside came right off. The bottom four were harder, as I ended up having to use a cut off wheel to cut a grove just below the bucket lip/edge to give me somewhere to start the chisel. The upper/outside pair took as long, or longer than all else combined! ... when hitting the bucket sometimes it would ring like a church bell!

Was this all air-chisel work cutting the welds?

We need photos!

 

[4570Man]

I would think that short of having the proper tools a grinder and a cutoff wheel would have made way faster and quieter work than chiseling then off.

 

[mini14]

I went through this a few years ago. Spent 3hrs oxygen acetylene torching my old ones off. With the large amount of material you
Have I would weld some x156 teeth directly to those stumps and be done with it

 

[disney]

I used my plasma, but it was tight getting the torch/handle in the bucket to shoot away. If I cut towards the bucket, the molten metal would just arc of the back of the bucket and land on my hand, or arm. A large 7/8 hand chisel and short handled sledge hammer split them apart/ off the main piece once most of the weld was gouged off. I only took one pic, sorry.