How to Operate an Excavator (ep. 063)

[Music] everyone Randy from extreme sandbox here today we're gonna show you how to operate an excavator yes we get a lot of clients off the street that we get out here just to kind of play and we teach them how to do it so we thought it'd be cool to put a how-to video together on how to run one of these things now disclaimer we are not experts at all but we can show people and we teach people daily how to do this so we're gonna show you how to do it so let's check it out so first thing three points contact any time you get in or out of equipment now we're today we're in a Komatsu PC 210 excavator on the controls I'm gonna go over are going to be in the Komatsu machine that most of them are pretty standardized between the different companies that make excavators but I'm gonna go through kind of the controls on this model whether you can run a two thousand pound mini excavator all the way up to a 60 tonne excavator generally the controls are pretty standardized there so first thing I do when I get in put my seat belt on big thing on these again I've shown this on other videos there are always door locks on equipment basically these a lot of these equipment can be run with the door open typically at the sandbox for safety reasons and dust control we seal our cabs so there's a lever right there on this basically we'll lock that door open but we're gonna swing it shut okay seatbelt is on one click on these make sure my system boots up no error messaging like that I'll turn it on I always let it idle up for a sec let it run you know a couple minutes we were running this thing earlier today now we're gonna go over some of the controls so first thing I'm going to slide my seat there's always a lot of different seat adjustments on these machines so it's very important to be comfortable where your eye can reach the joysticks you're these two-track paddles are what drive the tracks so on the machine you know safety is always the number one there is a safety lock lever over on the left side that is this red lever over here each different company has some version this but basically when it down nothing's gonna work in an excavator when we flip that up that means everything is live on the equipment okay so in general you don't want to be you know won't be ready to go before you pull that back you shouldn't have anyone on your tracks anywhere near you should have your seatbelt on be ready to go anytime that lock levers up again each manufacturers a little bit different there's some other different types but usually it's always a lever that's gonna block that doorway that's the big indicator that everything is live on there so to start with we're just gonna go over some basic controls now the first thing I want to tell you there are two different types of control patterns for excavators basically there is ISO controls and SAE controls typically ISO is the standard I historically have heard people call them cat controls and then John Deere controls not sure why they get broken out that way but it's also been called excavator backhoe controls there's different types really I'm gonna go over the controls with ISO which is the most standard I think the most important thing to know is pretty much every excavator out there nowadays the newer stuff has a simple valve that you can change patterns whether or not it's on the Komatsu it's actually right behind us by the engine compartment there's a valve you turn I think caterpillar has something underneath the floorboard you just turn a valve and it basically changes it but again these are ISO controls we were going with that I'm going to show you today so again you always want to be close enough my feet are touching the ground I got my throttle over here climate control right there but everything is set for me right now so if I start with controls is to show you the basics the right hand is your boom and bucket okay so if I pull back in this right hand you'll see this raises the boom up and I'm gonna go and throttle this thing up too so there's a throttle now boy well you'll see it run it at basically idle but I'm gonna throttle this thing up now this if you notice I turn the throttle up but the engine you didn't hear right away most of the newer excavators have a auto idle so when the machine's not working it'll bring it down to idle so you'll see soon as I touch this it'll go back now right hand forward will bring that boom back down now right hand to the right is going to open your bucket right hand to the left will close it so that's your right joystick left joystick is your stick and swing so with the left if I go forward it's going to put the stick out and if I pull back it's gonna bring it back you'll notice hydraulics as hard as I pull this that's how hard I go to be let off quickly it stops quickly so generally you want to be smooth with hydraulics now our swing control so it's left and right with this left joystick if I go left spins left I go to the right it spins right and I can do literally a 360 here the machine will not have a hard stop on this it'll just keep spinning if you let it those are those controls now typically we talk about driving position for thus now our driving position everyone's a little bit different they also call it transport mode ours is boom up stick with it straight down bucket flat basically what it looks like right here is how we drive with them the other piece you notice is your Square to your track so what you don't generally want to do is be sideways to your tracks at all because it's very awkward when you're driving now you can the machine will actually operate but generally it's just a lot less confusing if you are Square to your tracks out there the other sometimes transport mode you might see is when we curl the bucket in and basically tuck it all away now the machine is not going to hit anything here they're designed they have their stops in place so you can see I can tuck this thing in really tight so generally if an excavator is going in a tight area you can see how I have everything kind of compact and curled in there so that this is the other transport mode you might see in the wide open though especially at our site we generally just have these things straight up and down bucket flat the finally on the controls here is these two track titles an I'm going to go over that with driving in a second each one of these controls one of the track so the right one right there and left one right there those are the two track battles so those are all the basic controls on the machine now let's go into driving [Music] so the next is driving now there are a few different ways to drive an excavator for our clients out here we usually teach with hands but I'm gonna show you probably the most popular way that people do in the industry is with their feet so in general you're either driving or you're digging rarely you're you should be doing both so it's either operating these joysticks or those an expert might obviously be doing multiple things at the same time but again if you're just starting out always keep it simple do one at a time my feet are on here so now and I can keep my hands on my joysticks I normally would for this video I'm gonna keep them off just to show you I'm not touching that at all right here again each one of those they go both directions so I am going to push on both ball and you see as hard as I push that that is how fast the machine will go and if I want to turn so if I want to start turning the left I just let off on this left one you'll see my right one keeps going turning me opposite way if I let off on my right it turns me that way now there are on pretty much every excavator there's some level of a speed limiter or controller on it so for the Komatsu there's a little button on here and you might not be able to see it on here I'm on low-speed where they got a medium and a high it doesn't really mean you're going from probably three miles an hour up to maybe eight excavators are not designed to go really fast they're designed just to move to the job wherever they need to dig and then move so I'm gonna put it back to low but each manufacturer usually has some level of peace they can change so I'm gonna drive up here and again if I want to go backwards until I push on my heels they go both directions so you'll see these things are connected so you can do it just as easily with your hands now again just to go while we're talking about driving perfectly acceptable I can drive so if you see right there it doesn't change anything right here you know I can still drive sideways it's just really awkward because I can't see my track so I don't really know what I'm doing so generally you want to have everything nice and square and a lot of times I just tell people look out over their feet I mean kind of see where your feet where the glass their lines up at the tracks now while we're talking about driving forward reverse doesn't really matter if I go the other direction I just need to know I'm in Reverse so then I'm actually pulling on these things instead of pushing them okay let's spin back around so ideally I'm gonna drive forward the best way to get positioned for digging is really to be straight over your tracks this is where the machine is the most stable you've got that base spread out the track width spread out so in general you should be lined up Square to your tracks to dig again I'll show you in a little bit you can dig off the side the machines it's not quite as stable so we're gonna start off square to our tracks okay so now we're gonna go over digging [Music] okay so now to go over digging a lot of times for a newbie I recommend taking the feet off those controls just otherwise you might not even know what you might end up hitting that while you're going the other indicators if you hear that beeper that means you're hitting a track battle so you might even right here I'm barely touching it the machines it's not powerful enough to move it but I can hear the beeper that means that my foots on there I like to pull them off and I think for a new operator it's best to do that so now hands on joysticks we always start extending the stick out you know generally the further away from the Machine the less trouble you're gonna get in so it's always good for a new operator to start further away so I'll put the stick out bring it down and then I usually stop foot or so this is where we want to look at our teeth or on the bucket now we have dirt buckets here there are a lot of different types of buckets or attachments on here some you won't have teeth you'll just have a smooth edge that's usually for digging a foundation where it's not going to break up the ground but it really the concepts are all the same so if I always err on the side of out a little bit you don't want to go in you don't open your bucket all the way right away because right now you'll see I would actually hit that joint that's connecting the bucket not necessarily gonna hurt the machine probably not great for those joints and everything in there so you're gonna pull a bunch of material right in there so in general that's too far open the opposite of that if I go in too far curled I'm not gonna get much of a scoop because the bucket snot is curled partly so again there's a happy medium between having them out just a little bit then I push it down right there all you got to do then is curl right hand left now you'll see it kind of got stuck this is where you start pulling back on your boom at the same time and that'll raise it while curling in so right now it's curled you see it's stopped all the way raise it up a few feet above the ground then with my left hand is my swing control obviously don't want to dump too far from the pile in general you're gonna be back filling that later so it's got to be somewhat closed and then open that bucket up now the key again when you open it ideally just open it - the material falls off a lot of new operators as they're open they keep going and you'll hear that that's the hard stop the machine is designing it's designed to stop on its own again not great for the machine so in general just opening it off where the material goes out in tone and it's done that is the first one I had so if we go to the same spot generally you want to push down hard enough now this machine it will lift up the boom cylinder will lift up this entire machine so if I keep pushing right hand forward right now you're gonna see my entire tracks look raised off the ground in general you don't want to do that you want to keep your tracks flat on the ground so if you start you want to get to that point where you almost feel the tracks lifting but not quite because that means you're putting enough downward pressure to get you know all that pressure is going on those front on the front of the bucket to get a full scoop now that I'm there again curl it up it's gonna get stuck again you don't if I just pull back in the right hand right now here's what's gonna happen it's gonna raise up my buckets not curled all the way so I'm gonna lose that material that's why it's important to curl while I do it so if I do that again caryl stuck and I'm gonna pull back slowly now depending on the size machine you're running when you do that little piece and start pulling back you might feel the back of your excavator pick up a little bit there are large counter weights behind us there and that's also why I'm digging straight up my tracks I'm most stable obviously if you feel your machines still starting to tip maybe you got to open the bucket not be quite as aggressive obviously safety is key there our machines again we run come on sue PC two tens roughly 26 tons these machines are very stable on a flat surface generally the larger the excavator the safer it is just because you've got a larger base so you know most people think that a smaller mini excavator is safer and I would actually say the opposite is because it's a smaller machine it doesn't have as big a base on it so sometimes you get more trouble on a smaller machine than a bigger one raise that one up and again dump it there now when we train again we try and do one thing at a time to really keep it simple but the other piece we want to show is using the stick a lot of people when they're digging whether you're digging a trench or just moving they want to go straight to the track piles to back up to get dig closer understand a lot of these machines they have roughly a 20 to 30 foot reach to be most efficient you don't want to have to move the tracks every time you're trying to go so that's where the stick comes in but as you see as I pull the stick in it also brings it down so this is where you're using both joysticks I have to raise the boom up stick in but then again I can't go in right there I want to go with the teeth straight down I'm gonna extend it out so I can get into that accursed hole I had and then I curl that one in same thing raising it up sometimes again we teach our clients and curl it all the way but as you can see some of that material will actually fall over the back of the bucket so for an operator it's kind of a delicate balance here we were just trying to keep as much material in that bucket so you see how that buckets a lot closer now this bucket will I can curl it all the way up here and get this thing right in front of me you see how close that is in general these buckets are not going to hit you in the cab there are stops built-in but two things first of all the materials not secured in there so as you notice that it kind of jumped out there so depending if you had rocks or debris that stuff can come up on your tracks anything like that if there were some accessories like thumb there might be other things if there's not the standard bucket but generally they're not gonna hit it now with that said that's the cab this thing can absolutely hit my tracks so you see if I go off the corner here you can absolutely hit the corner of your track see I'm touching it right there forever to uncurl I'd actually put my corner of my track so that's also why I said in the beginning distance is your friend the further out you are away the less trouble you're gonna get in because this thing will absolutely hit your tracks if you let it now I'm gonna curl my bucket so if I just extend it without curling my bucket you'll see it'll start tough because I'm not making adjustments gonna start falling so I'm gonna curl it as well and ideally you want to have one dirt pile you don't or if you're doing a trench it might be a roll of material so the who's ever coming in to backfill later has that clean area to fill so I'm gonna dump there so those are basic controls you know some of the more expert I'd say for an opera it's been doing this for a while they're doing multiple so you can see I can do multiple cylinders I can be spinning I can do all these at the same time the Machine capsule II do it and after you've gotten a lot of stick time you'll be able to get better at that so but I always start peeling just do one motion at a time figure out what each cylinder does on this thing you know if you know the different components you'll start be able to pull those together so with this one you know an expert is generally pulling the boom in the stick in and curling they're almost doing three kind of scraping it up towards you so that looks kind of like this so if I'm pulling both my cylinders in and I'm curling my bucket you'll see how I'm getting a nice full and I'm kind of scraping nice and smooth like that instead of just doing one now I can do the same thing going out and I can put it right there so that's where you really want to practice and get proficient in doing multiple motions on here so I can scrape it pull it right in and this typically is how someone trenching would do a trench right out in front of them and again depending on what grade they're going to they would always start at max reach get as close you know within a few feet of their tracks and then that would be the time where they would back up because then they're gonna start it all over again so I would push back obviously I'm looking where I'm going backwards you've got mirrors on the machine and I can start that all over again that is the basic dig controls there so at any point if I were to park it we generally just want to try and put our buckets flat to the ground we usually touch it if you leave the bucket up in the air they can settle so you want to have that and put block lever down but that's everything with digging so now let's talk about backfilling [Music] okay so now we dug the trench dug the hole now let's just go over backfilling you know for backfilling obviously a bulldozer is great for backfilling that's generally what its gonna come in and do it but it's not realistic devil bulldoze are in every jobsite you know you take the tool you've got out there you know excavators can be used to fill just as much so with that you know part of it's just the opposite is you're just taking scoops out of the pile now the biggest thing people want to do it right away is they want to use the side of the bucket well couple reasons that's not great so if I do this first of all you're gonna realize really quickly there's not a ton of lateral force on an excavator you know in general that lateral swing is just designed to move the tool it's not designed to actually do moving material so that's the first piece the second it's not great for the bucket you know there are the pins that go in there if they're they're meant to go this way straight through towards the machine if you have that twisting force on them it's not great for your machine usually you only do that at the very end and that's we're gonna kind of get a great if there's this much material which again is not much here I'm still gonna try and just scoop through it using my same thing I just did on the first one I may try and you see how I swing a little bit while I'm in it so I can drag a little bit over but in general I'm using the bucket curl because that's gonna use the most now here's really important run basically trying to scrape up I don't want to create a new hole so I'm trying to move material without going below the surface where I don't so it's kind of a finesse thing we have to pull the boom up and stick in at the same time and try and swing over and then I dump it out try one more out here this is what really takes lots of stick time to get really good and proficient at doing both movements the stick and the boom at the same time with some bucket curl you generally want to start out at the farthest point you can because then I can just back up to get the closer part so you'll see some of the first spill I can't reach so I'll actually drive forward just a little bit so I can get out beyond that little Ridgeline there pull that in and start swinging now there wasn't we didn't have a ton of material here now to finish this off this is where we transition now to using that side because we're not actually moving a ton of material I usually tell people get the bucket the teeth flat to the ground you want to try and use that you don't want to go in like this because you're not gonna you're just gonna basically create a slope and you don't want to have it curled all the way because you're gonna see it's gonna concave through and it's gonna create kind of a circular so what you want to do is get your teeth flat to the ground so a lot of times I'll touch it make sure it's good then you just raise it off and then you can slowly start swinging through if it goes great sometimes you just have to pull back on it I'm gonna go forward a little bit more so I get that outside edge like that and again if I overshoot that a little bit pull that material in a little bit and then I could just use that stick to get close or distances here so you'll see I'm roughly getting in and I want to be careful how close I get I'm still in a good distance here and if it were to stop I would just pick up in the Boomer right now right now it's able to move all this material and I'm just shaving layers off here and then I can back up now once you get to the end here you saw kind of how I was curling up towards me the other thing you can do is use the back and kind of rake it away from you or so if you have material that's too close you generally want to have your bucket open like that you don't want to go into this with your bucket curled all the way because you'll see on the back there it's that same joint there this is not great for the machine because you're gonna get all that sand material whatever you're doing right into the joint where that boom cylinder bucket cylinder is so the ideal way I have that bucket open all the way that way you're just using the bottom of the bucket and this so if I push it just straight down you'll see it's not kinda sticks not gonna go anymore that's where you have to pull the boom back and then as it I can push that boom and kind of push material away from a little bit these are the things they're a little bit more advanced that guys have been doing this for years there's a reason they're so good as they do this and they get the feel of it it's because it's tough to keep that bucket nice and level at the same time you're adjusting multiple different components and then I can come through and use the side of the bucket and to try and finish it off if there's material left not perfect but for short amount of time not bad so now again to park it usually we park it with the bucket flat there's a lot of different ways you can park the machine the key though is being square here tracks a lot of times I see new operators might Park like this something like that the big difference here and you'll see it from the outside is to get in and out of a machine generally there's a step on the tracks if I open the door right now you'll see them off to the side and it's kind of awkward you know a lot of times getting in and out of machine it's usually where people have dumb slip-and-falls that's really get injured so that's why it's really important you either want to be square like this or for anything I hare the opposite direction because that actually opens up that step just a little bit more for me but our machines are large enough if I just goes square it's gonna when I open the door I'm gonna have a nice in and out of the machine and I just set the bucket flat nice and flat everything is stable in the machine from there remember you always want to deactivate that safety lock lever so that's this red lever again whatever machine you're in is gonna have some parking brake lock lever on the side I pull this up and now it's down everything is safe in there okay then I usually turn my throttle down and we let our machines cool about a minute or two is what Komatsu recommends you don't to leave them idling very long or let it run for a little bit and then we'll shut it down okay and then three points of contact step-step can lever to release doors right there Oh hopefully you guys had fun watching this episode of how to operate an excavator please comment below if you're an operator have a lot of stick time give us any tips and tricks you might have again we are not experts so thanks a lot for watching take care

Channel: ExtremeSandbox

Views: 647,485

Rating: 4.8184662 out of 5

Keywords: excavator, komatsu, digger, how to, earthmoving, heavy equipment, extreme sandbox, how to run an excavator, mini excavator, compact excavator, komatsu america, how to run construction equipment, excavators, komatsu excavators, how to operate an excavator, how to run an axcavator, step by step, beginners guide, beginner, heavy equipment training, how to drive an excavator, excavator training, heavy equipment operator training, heavy equipment operator, equipment operator

Id: uutTJgY7Br0

Length: 25min 43sec (1543 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 12 2018