The Rhinox Grading Bucket / Ditch Cleaning Bucket - What is it & When are they best used?
- Guides, Tips, & Knowledge Centre
- 14 Sep, 2022
What is a Ditch Cleaning Bucket?
If you've ever seen an excavator with a collection of buckets, chances are one of those buckets will be a Ditch Cleaning Bucket. They are one of the most common styles of bucket for an excavator and are known by a whole range of different names. Including Grading Bucket, Dyking Bucket and Finishing Bucket. But, what do these buckets look like and what are their best uses? Continue reading to find out more.
The Ditch Cleaning Bucket is a wide, shallow bucket with a straight edge, best used for levelling, shaping and finishing off surfaces before further works are carried out. Such as: laying materials like soil or stones on gardens or driveways, laying turf, levelling for planting and shaping flowerbeds. They are also commonly used for cleaning out ditches, (as the name suggests) and backfilling trenches.
Sometimes it is also used for loading large amounts of material onto trucks, trailers or dumpers. Some people think that because this bucket is wider it must carry more material but as the bucket is shallower this is incorrect. The depth has been narrowed to reduce the weight of the bucket so that the excavator is able to handle it without causing damage. This design is similar across all excavator sizes and manufacturers.
8 Features of the Rhinox Ditch Cleaning Bucket
1. Bossed Hangers and Removable pins -
The Rhinox Ditch Cleaning Bucket is made with bossed hangers and removable pins so that when the pins become worn - which they will - they are easy to replace. Often other manufacturers weld in the pins, this means that when the pins wear the bucket is effectively scrap - unless you're able to do a lot of welding and reconstruction work to replace the hanger area.
2. One Piece Shell Design -
This means that the bucket only requires one weld on the front of the bucket. This front facing weld makes it easily accessible by the welder so that they can get a very strong weld to maximise the strength of the bucket and drastically reduce the chance of weld fail.
3. Centre Support -
The downside of a wider bucket is that the centre can weaken or bend - we manufacture our Ditch Cleaning Buckets with a centre fin to support the bucket while digging and maximise the strength of the structure.
4. Reinforced Leading Edge -
Buckets that are consistently used in harsh conditions will tend to wear down the the front edges of the bucket faster - due to the friction with rough surfaces. To help deal with this, Rhinox have reinforced this leading edge with thickened steel to add durability, resistance and strength to help reduce the wear caused through use.
5. Wear Plates -
Similarly, to the Leading Edge, the sides of a bucket also face a lot of friction with rough surfaces and can cause uneven wear on the sides. The Rhinox Ditch Cleaning Bucket is manufactured with the Rhinox branding on the side plates, these double up as a wear plate for additional resistance and durability to wear.
6. Drainage Holes -
Digging in different conditions can cause material or dirt to clog up in the bucket. Our 2 Ton / 4k Lbs and above Grading Buckets have been made with drainage holes to allow the pressure to be released so the material can fall out easily. They also allow water to run out when digging in trenches or clearing debris, so you can remove any unwanted material without removing too much water at the same time.
7. Serial Number Badge -
All Rhinox Buckets are manufactured with a serial number badge on the back of the bucket, between the hangers, that gives you the Product Reference and the Serial Number for that bucket. The badges assist us to trace when it was made and which of our welders made it, as well as who it has been sold to and where it is going.
This also allows you to keep track of which bucket belongs to you if you are on a site with multiple operators or even to help organise and keep track of your buckets when storing.
8. Drilled Lip Plate -
Why are there holes drilled into the front edge of the bucket? This allows you to fit a reversable bolt-on blade which adds additional strength to your bucket and protects the lip plate from harsh environments.
What size Ditch Cleaning Buckets do Rhinox Manufacture?
Currently, Rhinox manufacture Grading Buckets / Ditch Cleaning Buckets for 1,000 - 9,000 lbs Excavators. These vary in size from 30 inches to 48 inches wide, for machine makes, such as: Bobcat, Kubota, Yanmar, JCB, Takeuchi and more. See the full list of machine ranges on our website here. The Rhinox Ditch Cleaning Bucket is also available with the Kubota Quick Attach or Bobcat X-Change Hanger Systems.