How to Operate a Bulldozer (ep. 061)

hi everyone Randy with extreme sandbox here today we're going to show you how to operate a bulldozer so we get a lot of clients a lot of different backgrounds out at our sites and we've also get inquiries about how to do it so today we thought we'd put you in our Komatsu D 61 and kind of go over the controls and show you what it's like the operative bulldozer let's check it out [Music] so first thing know there's always a lock lever on the door so the doors can be actually locked open but a lot of people have trouble trying to figure out how to close their doors so this little lever if it was locked would latch it so I'm gonna go ahead I turn the key one click here for this one we're sliding the system boot-up holding it all the way over and that's starting it while I'm waiting there I'm gonna put my seat belt on now a lot of controls there's a lot of different types of bulldozers out there you know I we've operated different brands I'm gonna kind of make this a little bit generic but it applies to really a lot of different pieces almost all of them have some kind of digital display on there obviously the basics knowing where your fuel level is seeing if there's any warning signs anything like that right now everything looks good here usually for a bulldozer got two joysticks and the levers are pretty standard left is always driving right is always your blade control those are the two different components then you've always got some other pieces on the equipment for accessories so like this one got a lever here on the right side this would be for like a ripper so sometimes on the back of a dozer you'll see a big like a thumb or something that you can put into the ground and tear through frost or hard ground that's what operate that so there's usually an accessory piece there other than that there's always some other buttons each different brand of a manufacturer has a few different tweaks on it but again the controls overall are pretty similar the key there is most bulldozers have a single pedal so if you look down here I'm holding the pedal down that's a decelerator pedal that'll basically bring the engine down to idle when we're going it's basically a stop in other machines there sometimes are two pedals one does the same thing it's a decelerator the other one I like to call brake brake and literally for some larger dough's or just putting the engine down to idle the machine will still roll so you actually want to push the second brake pedal that'll actually stop the Machine completely our machines at the sandbox have just one pedal which is probably the more norm now adays so that said climate control again our cabs are fully climate controlled we run newer equipment but you know depending on we have a lot of open cabs that's pretty common so but we have air conditioning over our shoulder here we have our throttle on the left right there up and down you can hear the engine coming up and down there and again my joystick so with this machine I got the throttle up you'll see this foot pedal you can't hear that bringing it down to idle so putting the air conditioning down a little bit and I go either way now for every dozer for Komatsu's they have safety lock levers I really like the design they have they have to safety levers one on each side and one controls the right joystick one controls the left cat runs a I believe is a switch a parking brake switch that would be on the dashboard on John Deere I believe has a single lever on one side each bank face a little bit different but there's always gonna be lock lever some safety device whether it's a parking brake or something that'll make that machine safe obviously you don't ever want to have someone up on the tracks near the equipment when you engage these okay so right now I've got my foot down I go ahead and pull these up and pull one at a time and those basically activate my joysticks so now both my joysticks are live I'm in neutral now for driving this your left hand again is steering so you've got for this one forward neutral verse and it basically flips through the gears and then the steer it is left or right again each manufacture is a little bit different something you'll actually twist it a little bit to turn left or right come on sue just goes left and right like this and then for speed control there's these little buttons on the left joystick and on the Komatsu you've got a digital display in front of you that basically again you may or may not be able to see this the little bars are going up and down and that controls you got an F for forward R for reverse that adjusts our speed setting on them back and forth again each manufacturer is a little bit different and how they make those speed adjustments but there's usually something on that left joystick that'll adjust that so that's our left now our right joystick is our blade control so with this right joystick in general if you pull back you'll see my blade is raising up these things hydraulics always have hard stops so they're gonna stop on their own it's not you don't want to hit them hard but again people you don't don't worry too much see if I pull all the way back in the right it's all the way maxed out so it goes forward right and back up and down and then if I go left and right it basically dips the blade corners down one side so if I push it to right goes right which is left it goes left and it goes back and forth like that and then the Komatsu there is a blade swivel it basically swings the blade so there's a little thumb here on the right that if I toggle this if I pull back on it it swims me to left push forward it goes to the right and this is basically again if see go back and forth here we'll go both directions again generally most dozers have a six-way pitch blade so you got the up and down you got the corners up and down and then you got the swing back and forth again some other dozers can actually roll the blade - so there's might be an eighth pitch blade there and then the other option some of it I've seen it on cat equipment some have a blade shake so usually there's a hole a button down there it actually shake the lay to remove any material on there for a Komatsu it's not really necessary we don't want to go up the hill we've lowered the blade to dump any dirt off it that's all of our right the other joysticks buttons on your the right on the Komatsu is a float it basically disengages my hydraulics to the blade so if I go down to the ground and I just if I hold it forward and push it I get a float symbol on here I'll go over that in a little bit what that looks like that's makes me when you're back trying when you want to smooth out material and I get a float symbol on here I'm gonna take it out of flow and then there's other like a joystick there's a button underneath if this was an intelligent machine at least for a Komatsu this is what turns on my automatic so if it's if it's set to great or whatever that would engage that so that's all the joysticks all the controls there so now again pretty simple right to drive it I'm in driving position get the blade usually want the blade a few feet off the ground so you can see all the way over it you're not Dutch I'm gonna put it in forward gear which is right there and then if I'm gonna set my no he's recommend starting slowest so I'm down to two tick marks and now if I just let my foot off that dozer is driving on its own you'll see I got no feet nothing on the controls now the machine's driving on its own now with my left hand again if I want to start steering to the right I just start pulling that to the right and again for the Komatsu it's just going to the right like this if it was some other machines you actually have to turn that left joystick now I'm gonna start ramping my speed up a little bit so I come I'm at the lowest speed setting so if I just start pushing up on this left you'll see my starts going up on here I can see on my digital display again you may not be able to see that every manufacturer is a little bit different setting for how they're gonna show that but on the Komatsu the way we have it set is this showing those little tick marks going up and this is max speed right here so you see if I just let it go I'm not doing anything now to stop it I just put my right foot down what you don't want to do is you don't just want to jam it out of gear you always want to try and stop it with the foot pedal that phrase your engine down before you start shifting gears what do you necessarily hurt it but from a safety perspective you always want to stop your machine before you change direction on that at all so now I'm stopped I click it into neutral and I can click it in Reverse now in Komatsu my Center display they have a backup camera nice so you'll see once I'm in Reverse I got my backup and then my speed is actually up in the corner and I can do the same speed settings there at my lap so now I start letting it off a little bit obviously watching out where you're backing out I've got a rearview mirror in front of me and tell people look over their shoulders and I'm looking at my screen right there so I can back and I adjust my speed either way and then I push again I stop with my foot I'm always stopping with my foot pedal put it back into forward and then I can slowly start letting that foot pedal off again in this configuration the machine will just drive on its own when it's going in a straight line I'm not feet aren't touching anything joysticks aren't touching anything now I can ramp my speed up a little bit we're going to go around this barrel and start pushing some dirt now the key on a dozer and anything is slow kind of subtle little adjustments with the blade you see as hard as I hold this it does that turn if I hold this all the way over you'll literally see one of my tracks actually starts going reverse my opposite so this thing will turn on a dime it'll do a 180 obviously you're kind of disturbing a lot of the ground there so you try and do nice slow subtle little adjustments there for us I'm just trying to line up over here to push dirt straight that way so I'm kind of where I'm at where I want to push dirt so first thing I generally tell people I recommend setting speed all the way down so I go down to the two tick marks for a new operator dozer the toughest thing is letting your brain keep up with the blade and the machine and that's why for a newbie you want to be at the lowest speed setting otherwise you just can't keep up the trick the dozer was probably the most difficult ones to master just because it's one of those few pieces that if you make a mistake you're gonna drive over your mistake in like three or four feet your tracks will actually go over that so it ends up a lot of newbies will have rollercoasters there where they're going there correcting the blade angle so it's always wise to start at your slowest speed now I'm in forward on lowest speed this is where I can make my blade adjustments now as I go down here if I see I can try and get it somewhat even or level and push down now again if I were to push down the CL this actually will pick up my machine I'm can do it you don't want to start like that because the moment I start going forward my blades gonna sink into the ground and create a big old divot so generally you want to be right above the ground and let this go nice and slow and if I needed to make little adjustments here again I got all those six different pitches there I'm just gonna let this start going on its own slowly here and again you slowly want to cut in you kind of gotta protect predict what the machine's gonna do cuz I know if my tracks are gonna drive over this lip here my whole machine's gonna pivot forward um so that's where I might have to make a little blade adjustment we're gonna go in here I'm gonna start pulling back on it a little bit just cuz I see my machine going over the edge there and I don't want to get too loaded but as I start my tracks start bobbing them out I'm making little adjustments it's kind of I call it the seat in the pants feel you're trying to feel your butt which way the machines pivoting you want to get to this point where you're at max loads so right about here you see my machine just pretty much stops that's where you kind of want to ride that edge you know where you're almost stopped but not all the way so now I'm just pulling back just enough to make motion you see dirts kind of coming over the side this is where if I see one sides get more dirt than the other again it really depends what I'm trying to grade too for us here at the sandbox a lot of it's just we're trying to create a nice grade a slope going up so I pull back a little bit and then I just let this machine drive it all the way out on its own again I'm not touching an ting in the lip sometimes minimal improvements better is let the machine drive through it on his own once I'm there I can dump my blade if I need to this all right just kind of drop it forward if there's material on it and then you always want to retract your blade anytime you're backing up newbies a lot of times will keep their blade down a little bit what happens then inevitably you end up catching that hill or whatever you're grading so a lot of times it's best just to have it retract it now in Reverse I'm going to bump my speed a little bit and that's it for this one I'm gonna go for a deeper trench so I'm gonna back all the way out put it back at the forward I lower my speed a little bit more again the trick here is really kind of realizing that your blade is creating your roadway in front of you I'm gonna go a little bit faster obviously I've been doing this a bit for newbies I do recommend the lowest speed setting but maybe we'll do a couple pushes and if I feel so right now I feel my tracks kind of a little bit to the right I'm sorry a little bit to the left so that's where I might dip my blade to the right because it's giving me a little bit more material or Phil over on that left side to raise the machine I'm gonna back out do one more go finish the farther the push the tougher it is to maintain that grade so again I'm lowering my speed oh not at the sandbox we'd like to go over these things probably not something you do on a jobsite but usually we grow up and kind of teeter-totter bulldozers are very stable machines so that's the only real benefit is a lot of that weight is down low between the track so the mission really you know I'd say tough to get in trouble in a dozer because uh pretty stable unlike an excavator or wheel loader so that's kind of pushing dirt now let's do I could show a little bit of back feeling so I'm then on this if I just want to spin all the way around I can literally do a 180 and now I'm aiming at my trench again for this I'm just dropping that blade dropping my speed and I'm just trying to get my blade right at the base here these are kind of short repetitive pushes always want your nose ideally aiming towards the deepest part of the trench because you'll kind of that's where we're trying to push our material now this is where we might start using that blade swivel so if I come off here on the side my nose is still aiming over there but I want to pull all this material this ridge line on the right side to the center this and the feed from Minnesota I call it snow plowing to kind of pull that blade in and again I'm watching my corners I got my speed down this is where I'm gonna go forward here and again I'm watching you're always watching your tips and you're trying to see where you're at with the material with the side of the plane here on the ground and I'm trying to just maintain that on both sides but this is kind of pulling material into the center and I kind of hook it in at the end there to really get it all into that trench and then I do one more those from the other side so as I'm backing up I'm turning that blade and this one I'm pulling into the center to the right now and trying to kind of combine the both of all right there and now that I've got two ridges kind of pulled together in the center I'm gonna do one more push right down the center again reversing is kind of the time you can make up speed because you go back or it's a little bit quicker and quicker I don't want to get played in too deep here but I'm going to try and carry this all the way forward and then I'm just trying to get all this to kind of fill it in generally it did pretty close not ideal again for doing it quickly so we try new it now now we show back feeling a little bit back dragging I did a rough finish there now generally most dozer work is done pushing forward but there is a way to back drag and use the bottom of the blade going reverse Komatsu you said there's a right thumb trigger on the very top so the bottom trigger there goes left and right swings it this one actually helps engage so if I push this all the way down and I press that button I get a float symbol right now the blade is floating and what that means it's basically disengage the hydraulic it's not gonna raise it up or down I can still go left and right like this and I can even twist it left and right but it will not put any downward pressure on there the other manufacturers all have something similar if I were I think caterpillar you just jam the right joystick forward all the way in the locks it forward I bully again each machines a little bit different but almost all them have that feature built in now I cook it in reverse and I start backing up these ones you can do a little bit faster you're gonna see a nice smooth this is where you start feeling your machine like right now I can feel which sides pick it up you try to do these in a straight line but now I feel my right side dipping so I'm gonna lose some of that material so I'm dipping my blade because my machine right now is sideways but I'm trying to compensate that in the front with my blade angled so I'm going left and right here well you can see out in front of me then I've got it's kind of packing it down getting a nice smooth finish there the key here though at the end you want to take it out of float so now right here I'm going to kind of stop I'm gonna pull it my right hand back I don't want to pick up the whole blade right now I'm gonna lose a big pile of dirt right in front of there so I just want to take it out but I want to keep backing up and now this right manually try and pull the blade while I'm backing up to let it trail out on its own so you don't leave a big pile of dirt you're obviously watching where you're reversing so I'm looking at my plate if my backup camera perfect no we will basically Park this so that's about it other than that you know I didn't go over much the settings are all different from each piece you know obviously there's lights in this one you've got wipers above my head over here all of the machines are gonna have some of those basic amenities but now with the park it obviously you want to be in neutral right there you want to set the blade on the ground like this once the blades on the ground I usually let my foot off once you hear that engine you know you're an eye ear neutral to verify because it's not all anyway then we go ahead you always want to disengage your safety lock levers again never ever ever get in or out of a piece of a gun when these things engaged this is your ultimate safety like your parking brake put them down I'm gonna turn the throttle down and we're good turn the Machine off I usually let it idle for a thirty Seconds to a minute or so three points contact coming down the machine so that's how you operate a bulldozer again by no means am I an expert but that would at least show you enough of the basics to get you started takes operators experts years and years and thousands of hours to get really good at grading but that at least shows you how to safely operate a bulldozer thanks for tuning in [Music]

Channel: Heavy Metal Learning

Views: 627,570

Rating: 4.8024421 out of 5

Keywords: How to operate a bulldozer, Komatsu D61, Bulldozer instructions, Operating a dozer, Backfilling, Backfilling with bulldozer, Grading with bulldozer, Bulldozer education, Blade maneuvering, Komatsu, how to drive a bulldozer, how to run a bulldozer, how to run a dozer, how to run a d6 dozer, how to run a cat dozer, komatsu bulldozer, bulldozer training, heavy equipment training, heavy equipment operator training, heavy equipment operator, equipment operator

Id: ky9aMo-RaQo

Length: 21min 9sec (1269 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 05 2018