What Machining Processes are Involved in Excavator Buckets?

The manufacturing of excavator buckets is a complex process, and although machining processes do not occupy the entire workflow, they play a decisive role in the precision and reliability of key components. The entire machining process begins with CNC plasma or flame cutting machines blanking high-strength steel plates to create the preliminary outlines of components such as the bucket body plate, side plates, and ear plates.

Next, for components that require specific curvatures (such as the bucket back and bucket bottom), large-tonnage presses are used for bending or mold forming. This is a plastic forming process, rather than traditional cutting, but it lays the foundation for subsequent processing.

Welding is the core process of bucket manufacturing, assembling and welding the various components into a whole. After welding, stress relief annealing is usually required to eliminate the internal stress generated by welding and prevent deformation and cracking.

At this point, the real machining begins to unfold. The ear plate holes and lug holes on the bucket that connect to the boom and linkage are key stress points, with extremely high requirements for concentricity, position, and surface finish. These holes are usually precision bored on boring machines or large CNC machining centers to ensure that the center lines of several ear plate holes are completely consistent, so as to ensure that the pin can pass smoothly and avoid local wear.

In addition, the contact surface where the bucket connects to the boom also needs to be milled to ensure a flat and stable joint. For the inner cavity of the tooth seat, which has been quenched to increase surface hardness, traditional cutting methods are difficult to process due to its extremely high hardness. Grinding processes are often required to finish it to achieve the final dimensional requirements.