Dimensions in turbocad

wire frame dipper arm

Hidden line dipper arm

Dipper arm for twenty tonner

Fillet fun

Well i found this trick by accident but still very useful to illustrate to the shop floor where the welding areas are, It is achieved by altering the properties of each section of the construction parts i have not seen it covered by anyone before although it must of been done by someone anyway just a handy little tool to use, Ok it is obvious where the areas on this drawing are to be welded but still usefull for say little hidden areas can not seem to get it to work all the time but still useful, This example is a dipper arm for a twenty tonne komatsu on 80mm pins

wire frame shear

hidden line shear

First long reach cat in the uk

We made quite a few of these and here comes a confession one of them was a complete disaster, It was fitted to the first long reach caterpillar excavator in the uk and we fitted the attachment on a job in Liverpool, Well the ram destroyed itself and the ram manufacturer said it was our fault that the unit we made was not strong enough well we say it was so never concluded where the fault lay but the ram manufacturer said that the unit was twisting and that had meant the internals on the ram had got scored and picked up. In conclusion all i can say is it was a first if it was down to us, Here it is in wire frame and hidden line mode this is not the original but pretty close

shear for sixty tonner

new type shear

hydraulic shear

bit of sponsorship

caterpillar tracks

knocking stuff down

demolition at height

Next picture at this hieght and angle would be pushing a full wall over so you will have to use your imagination a bit and no i am not going to draw a full machine for you

front view

clean sweep

operation clean sweep

Ok got email can you show me how you use the grab for cleaning up on the demolition sites ? Well john it is not a big deal but i have just added a girder to this grab picture just a matter of grabbing it and dragging all the waste to one area into a pile say drop the girder to one side and then load your waste with the grab, just a little bit of sweeping up to do

Bumping my gums

Ok why am i telling you all this, Well the world has changed in a big way, Get smart or get on benefits it is that simple, Cad is so clever that at first looks it is not apparent that the features in a cad drawing can be selected as regions for machining in a cam program, i have been playing around with rhino cam in demo mode and it has opened my eyes up i can tell you, take a look at the wire frame drawings in this blog and then think about selecting one of the regions to perform a specific task, Now when i was involved in heavy engineering we had never even looked at a computer, We used to draw everything by hand and then pass the drawings on to the lads and lasses on the shop floor, no big deal is it ? Well yes it why ? Well we made a lot of stuff and a lot of money, But we spent a lot of money as well and always seemed to be chasing our tails well no surprise there then, Is it easy to learn all this ? no it is not i taught myself and took me years, So why bother well if you never read another word in your life read this computers are the way forward what i like about computers is the fact that you can sit there and just keep doing it and doing it again, Does not cost anything can do it in your own home and at your own leisure, when you have the time. keep you out of the pub, keep you away from chicks whatever reason you want, make an excuse to yourself if you want to but "learn it"there is a lot of cad stuff out there and some is very cheap i have never used anything but turbocad so i am not going to do like for like etc, i also have no affiliation with them they will not even put a link to my website, They would not appreciate why i am writing about turbocad ,I am repaying what i consider my dues to turbocad as it has given an old demolition contractor a different perspective and a way of expressing the many years on the road whilst it is true that i have been involved in one way or another with construction plant and equipment since birth really cad gave me a way of sharing that so that is what this blog is all about and as a sag way to the memory of the greatest friend and brilliant engineer it was ever a privilege to work with MIKE REYNOLDS sadly missed rip ok going to grab a coffee and do a bit of cad stuff. ps all the equipment in this blog we actually made apart from the breakers but we did make the mounting saddles for them

wire frame

This is prior to rendering with lighworks

Teeth and wear strips

This is a quick hitch type fitting

mass excavation bucket for 360 degree machine

wire frame

hidden line what it really looks like

pins detail 80mm

ripper view two

ripper tooth in turbocad v 15 professional

Ripper tooth one of my favourite drawings and so simple the big stuff seems to work well in turbocad more shiny area i suppose this ones on 80mm pins so fitted to a twenty tonner about 2 metres high in real life, i made one for a local quarry owner and he got years of trouble free work from it,Ripping rock or concrete puts enormous strains on conventional buckets and even dynamic loads occur so quicker to take the digging bucket off and put the ripper tooth on , it is particularly handy in quarrying as the tooth can get down the cracks or fault lines in the rock

ripper tooth

using what is available

Ok so we are demolishing a building that is bit too high grab yourself a girder and extend your reach a bit as it were. "Not for amateurs this one you will end up with it in the cab with you", The early ones we made were not the best ones out there we had a sort of bed of nails effect going on so we lengthened the middle tooth to break through the concrete first, A lot more successful but higher wear rates on the middle tooth

if you were short of reach whlist demolishing

just found some more pulverizer shots

opened up view

hydraulic pump

turbo cad v15 professional

The hydraulic pump was done using the gears tool in turbocad v15 professional and slowed my lap top to a crawl , There is a lot going on in this drawing but is not visible from the render view the front mounting flange is made using face to face lofting and with all the allen key fastenings burns a lot of memory, i still can not get it to look like i want so going to try it on my quad core and try get the look i am after

hydraulic pump in lightworks render

hydraulic pump hidden line

wire frame hydraulic pump

draw hidden line as dashed line

So now you should be getting the idea of how much work goes on behind the scenes. But as i said before you have got it forever once you have saved it. The reason i am bumping my gums so much about cad is that it stands to reason that once this downturn in the economy is over the world is going to be a very different place, people are always going to want things so they still got to be made "BUT AT WHAT COST" well you can make absolutely anything in cad and then turn it over to a cam program cam uses the information in the drawing to make the sucker so it's a no brain'er if you ask me. ps i have been wrong once before but can not remember what it was it was so long ago.
Is it easy to learn ? no it is not well not for me what's the cost ? well how long is a piece of string ? i have never used any other type so i can not compare it with anything else, Autocad seems to be the industry standard but is pricey turbocad starts off very cheap indeed,, Anyway i do not sell it so it is no skin off my nose what you buy ,if you do decide to have a go let me know. The rest of you better get socialised and on benefits because that is what is in store for you i am afraid, there are not the resources on the planet for it ever to come back as it was SORRY

hidden line

wire frame breaker

bit more decent

wire frame

getting angry

Ok so got email nice one but missed the point "nice photo's Well thanks but they are not photo's they are scaled technical drawings ok they look good to the eye but that is not the point so going to show you why i am pretty passionate about turbocad. It takes a lot of hours of work to churn out some of this stuff. I keep looking at some cad sites and all i find is photographs, blood boiling time !! anyway next section is some various stage of the drawings so keep up. ps once done in cad got it forever "back it up of course"

close up of con rod bracket

con rod bracket

This bracket fits all the attachments we made 80mm pins for a twenty tonne machine which were our bread and butter jobs and we made hundreds of them

standard con rod bracket

bear with me on this section

concrete pulverizer

concrete processing with a pulverizer

new inovations

One truly revolutionary attachments was the concrete pulverizer, Much like the grab and indeed could be used to load scrap metals or waste, Concrete beams had always been a problem we could put them through the crushing plant but the reinforcing wire caused havoc with the conveyors and was a valuable resource of metal that would end up on the crushed concrete pile, And would need to be picked out manually. The pulverizer works much like the grab but with sharpened teeth to break the concrete surrounding the iron bars some even had blades similar to the shear so that they would cut the reinforcing bars as well but were prone to heavy wear rates as the abrasive concrete took it's toll on them can not find all my pics of the one i designed so i am going to do some duplicate ones and will edit them out later

super blunt

super blunt

Well funny how things change the following picture is a super blunt chisel, We used to throw them away when they got to this stage now we buy them like this. Why ? Well modern machines have so much power that the blunt chisel transmits all the force into the work piece. where a chisel would chip a piece off and you would have to tee the piece up again the super blunt shatters the whole piece. This reduces the wear and tear on the breaker very significantly as the chisel does not keep slipping off and misfiring so a very significant improvement, Why i did not think of it i will never know

concrete breaker

IMPACTOR ROCK BREAKER

free to look at

breaker detail

hydraulic breaker

concrete breakers

rock breakers

I recently spent three years looking at the back of one of these when the company my own company was working for went bust on me leaving me high and dry, might as well get it out now "christiani & nielson "bxxxxxxs" 200k gbp down anyway got back on my feet now and on a roll

grab closed

turbocad uses

It is useful when designing these type of attachments to be able to check stroke length of rams on the actual machine so the design can be made to accommodate the various different travel requirements i devised my own way in turbocad to animate the moving part to simulate travel on the actual equipment this is an example of the grab fully open

grab open