Extended Information:
Video 1:
Hi, I'm Ted from Everything Attachments, and we're today with our new grapple. It's for the bigger Compaq's that we call the mega compacts in the utility tractors that have been coming in for the last 10 or 15 years. Utility tractors usually stop in about the 70, 75 horsepower range. They usually start and the sixtyish horsepower range. The mega compacts have gone from what used to be a maximum compact of about 40 horsepower, then they went to 50 and now they're all the way to 65 with some. When you add a cab bone and a powerful loader you really got a substantial tractor there sometimes even stronger than some of the utility tractors that don't normally come with cabs and so forth and the utility tractors usually their value tractor.
It doesn't have all the bells and whistles but it's a plenty capable tractor. Since it doesn't have the big strong loader that they put on their deluxe tractor, we tried to build a grapple that was right in the range of weight for the big compacts and the utility tractors where we're not putting the 1,200 pound grapple on the front of them to take up all their lifting capacity because usually they have somewhere between two and 2,800 pounds of lifting capacity.
We've built a different grapple and we actually we made it heavier than we wanted it. We took out the wicked tans on the front where they don't have that big spade for gusted fair. What we did was, we didn't laminate it, we put the big spade in there. We made some parts had a happy answer we just ended up with more weight than we wanted. The people that did get to see it were really disappointed that on this size of grapple meant for a utility compact tractor, that we had put that spade on the front because knowing it was going to be much harder to push through the gap ground to get those roots that are just a few inches under the ground.
We went back to our roots of what the wicked root grapple was for this one. We do have this grapple and a heavier version, we'll show you later for bigger tractors. We're just going to go around and give you some of the basics of what we're doing here. In a first glance, and 20 feet away, it looks a lot like our just a regular compact wicked root grapple, what we've done is we've added seven inches to the length of the tan there and given you just simply more volume, okay? We've kept this the way we're putting a tractor hitch on it, not a skid-steer here it's because if you make it for both, if you make it for a skid- steer you have to put even more spacing on the back to make sure it clears the tracks and you have to put the angle on it because skid-steer would not roll back far so you have to put an angle on there, so it can roll the bucket up. This is done specifically for a tractor. It's not that it couldn't go on some skid-steers, it's definitely not gonna go on the skid-steer with a door that front opens, because where higher, we're simply not designed for a skid-steer.
You'll see we made this really thick here since we made this out of three-eights instead of going to half inch material. This whole grapple is at 8572 separate these end pieces here, a great 80 steel, just to make them really strong so we don't have to put that big gusted in there. We kept this really wide here to give it a lot of strength. What a lot of people were doing, even with the right sized tractor on the right grapple, what you can't do, is it's not a rake there's a specific grapple called a rake, which we do build this meant to put the upper lid down and drag backwards. It has stops and so forth. When the cylinders heat, it can't damage the cylinders and it can't do a lot of things.
This, when the lid is all the way open the only stop is the cylinder and the mounts. If you're just dragging up, loose stuff like I do, limbs, things like that, grappling the power of the grapple will never hurt anything. If you hook that grapple under a four-inch root, this six inches under the ground and decide you're going to take your 8,000 pound tractor and put it in low reverse, you can almost rip the lids off or break the tie rod cylinders or almost anything.
We've only had one to do that, but I just wanted to give you a heads up on that. They're not really meant for serious back drag. What we've done on these, to be able... we actually went around. We looked at a lot of grapples to see what we wanted to build in this style of grapple. What we found was, everybody wants a wider opening to some degree there's a point where enough is enough to me. We even found where when you open the lid all the way, that they were measuring from this tip, all the way to the floor instead of to any part of the upper part of the lower lid. So from tip to tip were 42 and 78 of an inch or so on the these, almost 43 inches. You ought to be able to get anything you need to in that. It also will let you pull your limbs and stuff where you can pick them up well. It is still the type of grapple where the ends meet, so you can pick up really small stuff.
Now, every grapple we measured only had eight-inch surely a stroke. This has a 10, so that lets me raise this. It lets me get my full stroke to get it all the way up to 43 inches and it gives me the geometry to have a lot more push.
That's a two and a half inch diameter cylinder instead of two. Between the two and a half inch cylinder, 10 inches a stroke in the right geometry, you're going to have a lot of down force pressure on this grapple. We've put all the holes in it just like the wicked grapples to lighten it up. This whole grapple cylinders hoses, couplers, it's got the spring mechanism on it that we had with the fittings up here that will swivel were the total weight of 665 pounds.
Now this is a 73-inch. Because of the way it's made and it going own a mega compact and a utility tractor, we're only going to make it right now into two wits. We can make it in four just as easy but it costs the same when you're going to get less and I'll explain why. The lids are where they are, there's nothing I'm going to change about where the lids are. They're over the main plates here. We did substitute this, we sacrificed a little weight here to have a complete plate, instead of just the hook ups at the top and the bottom, and we still left the angle in there, so when you come in here, with your quick attach as you lift up, it's going to self-center itself.
One of the things that some of the people don't understand exactly is how the spring is meant to be used, and the reason we have these plugged together is, so I can lift one of the lids and let the air transfer over or they all if it was all in it. These are going to be a little bit short. These are the same limb, this what we use on our compact one. These are going to need to be extended, this is what they put on the very first one for prototype. It will be right for our new Kubota that it's been so dry, we haven't been able to get any videos in here lately. It's been terrible weather.
We do have a new L66 Kubota, which is to be a perfect match for. It'll be the right lid poses for that, some of the utility tractors would need longer ones. When it's hooked up, when this is bent down and you can see these are swivel fit and so it's not hurting anything it's not twisting the hoses like it would only normal tractor, or grapple. This can pull all the way down to about there, leaving you a lot longer hoses or a lot shorter hoses going a lot longer distance but being added the way when you've got it curled up and not getting pinched between your tractor and material.
Now there's a big difference between the cheap grapple and a good grapple to me. The first thing that's going to set me if, I look at one grapple and I say cheap or good and I look at the other one the say the same thing, the first thing that I'm going to determine a good grapple from a bad grapple is, and a lot of people on the in piece, would do this design right here. It's one piece, got a nice radius, and that radius makes it strong, okay? If all your internal bars are nothing but a flat piece on the back that runs from your main tube your main tube and it has a flat piece from the tube to the front, so you've got two pieces just intersecting with a three by three or four by four. It's not going to be nearly as strong as this.
Now, why do people do that? It's simply because, when I nest...nesting is when you take your parts and you put them on the sheet of metal when you have angles and things like that you simply use a lot more of your sheet of steel to get the parts you desire, out of it. If I just do square bars to weld flat to that surface, I'm going to get a whole lot more. I waste more metal in my nest to get this type of grapple time, but it's simply the best. I'm not going to cut corners, I'll simply go around them and make a nice round corner if that's what it takes to make it strong. We've done a lot of things with this grapple. A lot of things are hidden and I don't ever write anything down, everything I do just kind of off the hip of what I do.
We've gone here to a drone over mechanical tubing, that's really solid, it's thick. We put a 316 stick lid, and that's what keeps these lids from skewing. If you skew this lid which it can be done with the right log, in the right tractor, in the right operator, but in most cases you're good all the way around.
We added these extra gussets right here which I've never seen on a grapple lid. That keeps these pieces from being able to lean in, which allows it to start twisting. We've done something here just to make everything stronger. We're using one inch which is two half inch laminated plates.
The reason we laminate a lot of stuff in Everything Attachments, anything over half inch thick, in a pickled old metal meant for a laser, you basically can't get it. It actually laminate, it's actually stronger, it's a little more work for us to do but it would but it works well and we can do it quicker and we don't have to mess with that one inch thick plate that has to be sand blasted and so forth for laser. What we do works is good or better. We also have gone instead of greasing it from the center here, we're greasing it from the pin, we're boring an eight then show all the way to the center that pin, and countersinking the grease fitting where it can't be knocked off. These hoses here are protected by there's no holes through the lid right here, and then everything is protected from behind here with this plate.
The regular compact grapple uses a three by three tube, which is what this is and it's a 316 thickness. This is a quarter inch thickness on the utility large compact grapple. We don't really want to go wider than 73 inches with a three inch tube. The other one that we've built has four by fours, but it weighed a lot more and it will go to 84.
Now we're going to do a 73 and 55. A 55 means your grapple will be as wide as the lids. This hose out or time will simply be gone. If you wanted a 66, it would take the exact same amount of parts. It's just less tubing between there. If you wanted a custom 66, you may have to wait a week or so to get it. We would make it for you, it would be the same cost as a 73, just need to request it.
If you need special hose lamps for your tractor, if you've got a factory Kubota auxiliary hydraulic, your outlets come out on your loader about half way down. They don't come to the center of the tube and you will definitely need longer hoses. Make sure that you tell someone where your outlets are, and what size you want. P
Pretty much everything else we've done, we've tried to keep it is good as the success we've had with the wicked root grapple for the Compacts, and we look forward to have more success for this. Just give us a call, or email at Everything Attachments and we'll make sure you get the right grapple for your tractor.
Video 2:
Hi, I'm Ted, from Everything Attachments. We're here today with our new mega grapple utility size tractor grapple. This grapple also comes in a 73, which we've already done the video on. I just wanted to, while we had a 55 getting ready to go out, I wanted to explain a couple differences and why you may or may not want to choose a different cylinder for these particular grapples. They both will use the same cylinder, but just…I'll give you a little heads up.
Okay so, we did do a video of just how much abuse that this thing can take. It wasn't really meant to be shown to my customers. If you want to look at it, you'll find it on YouTube in Everything Attachments channels. We just tried to do everything that...everything from unsafe to what you shouldn't be doing, like pushing with the lids open and everything. Just because you see it in the video, doesn't mean that you should be doing it. I was just doing it to see how much punishment that it would take, and expected to bend some parts, and so forth. I wanted to find out where the weaknesses were. Really didn't find any, so we hope that this is...we've got the design exactly right and we're looking forward to this being a really good design. We've already sold a dozen of them, in two weeks. This is the first one that's going out of the 55 inch.
Now I had mine on the test video, on the new L6060 Kubota. One of the things I noticed with, is the newer compacts, and the utility tractors, being kind of an economy tractor, they don't have a lot of gallons per minute of flow. Be careful when you look, because a lot of times, they'll give you the whole number, and not deduct what the power steering, and so forth is using. In other words, my L6060 shows like 14 gallons per minute, but when it comes down to what's left for the auxiliaries, it's only 9.5. This is the perfect grapple for that tractor, and I love it, but what I noticed was, when I had the two and a half inch bore cylinders on it, and this being a 10-inch stroke, which is longer than any grapple of this size I know of, which allows us to bring this up, and get a lot of down pressure and leverage on this lid. What it did with that 10-inch stroke, it just made the lids really slow up and down with only nine and a half gallons of flow. Anything under twelve and a half gallons of flow, I believe I would use the 2-inch cylinders. If you've got 12 or more gallons on your tractor, then you may want to use the two and a half inch. I think just because of the leverage, you've already got more down pressure than any grapple on the market. The 2-inch bore definitely makes them open quicker, when they have to move that full 10 inches of stroke.
We're also going to have our single lid. We just started the design for it today. This will come with a single lid, and it'll be a 36, and that means it would come from this time, to this time, as a single lid, single cylinder. It'll be good for loose brush, and a little less clearing type, because it's a single lid, and you're not going to have as much pressure per lid but it's still will be a great piece for most people. You still have the 43 inches of lift on this. I've got the hoses hooked together so I can lift them up. This is enough room for this size tractor to get anything in it that you should need. It's got these nice sharp pieces here to help you pull small stuff out of the woods. It's got the 1 inch thick cylinder mounts, where we're greasing them through the pins with a countersunk grease fitting so you don't tear that up.
I've had a lot of people say that I should have put JIC fittings on the hydraulic hoses, instead of pipe fittings. If you look at the size of these fittings here, a JIC fitting is real easy for me to put on. I simply crimp it on, tighten it right here, and I'm done. Instead, we're using pipe fittings, and we're using them for mainly just one reason. They're simply twice as heavy, they'll take twice the abuse, and believe it or not, these are American made instead of all the JIC stuff pretty much comes from China. If you had to on the weekend, if you rip the line for some reason, you could go to a hardware store, almost anywhere, and get pipe stuff.
We still use the swivel fittings here, which are expensive, but lets these pull down without twisting all these hoses all day long. There's a whole lot of things you get with a Everything Attachments grapple in this wicked version that you just don't get with anyone else's. We're willing to put the extra time and effort putting these old style pipe fittings together, simply because they're stronger and more durable for you.
We've put these extra gussets in here on this lid, made this really high. As much twisting, and pulling as I've tried to do with my tractor, we didn't move the lid any, so these formed gussets are really working good. We've kept all the holes in it, kept it light, kept the good grades of metal, kept the front gussets out of it where the compact tractors can actually push through the ground and do some raking with the front. You really shouldn't pull back with the lids on these, unless it's moderate stuff, and you kind of know what's under there.
We added the solid plates on here instead of just putting the top and the bottom on it and letting it hit against one time. We wanted to fully support this for the bigger tractors that have the push power. You can see this big tower, this cylinder is on, to give it the angle it needs to give you that full grapple force for what you're doing. This is the standard universal hitch on it like a skid steer. We also offer it in the John Deere hitch, and the Euro hitch. That's what most of the John Deere's have gone back to. I've used it on my tractor for the last few days at my house. I absolutely love it, so hopefully this will meet your needs for your mega compact, or your utility tractor because there's not many grapples out there, that I see just that make that perfect fit for the heavy dutieness versus the weight that they need, and being able to get this type of grapple force.
If you'll give us a call or an email at Everything Attachments, we'll be happy to make sure that you get the right size grapple, and make the right size cylinder choice for your tractor.
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Good grapple but terrible sales people. 