BUCKET FOR A SKID STEER

Description

This application claims priority from U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 60/611,727 filed Sep. 21, 2004, which is hereby incorporated herein by reference.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates to a bucket to be used on a skid steer. More particularly, it relates to a bucket with a tapered or angled front end, which is useful for cutting a swale or a drainage ditch.

Houses are being built very close together, such that digging a drainage ditch between the houses becomes very difficult due to the limited room available for maneuvering a piece of equipment. A typical excavator with a swing boom requires too much room to be able to operate in the very narrow spaces between many of these homes. The option of hand digging these drainage ditches is not only costly and time consuming; it also results in less than satisfactory results.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The present invention provides a bucket designed to be easily mounted to a skid steer, which makes it highly maneuverable and very compact, such that a drainage ditch can be dug very quickly, even in very tight quarters where other mechanized forms of ditch digging are not practical.

In a preferred embodiment of the present invention, the bucket has a tapered front end with straight sides, which intersect to form a “V”. This feature makes the bucket very efficient in digging into the ground, much like a plow. The bucket also may be used to hold and move dirt from one place to another.

Adjacent the vertical back plate (which contains the standard mounting arrangement for mounting to a skid steer), the rear of the bucket has a flat bottom portion, such that the bucket can sit flat on the ground. This feature has several advantages. First, it facilitates the hook up of the bucket to the skid steer. The skid steer simply drives up behind the bucket which is resting on the flat bottom portion lying at the correct orientation for the hook up. It also allows for easier transport of the bucket on the flat bed of a truck, for instance, as the bucket sits flat and stable on the floor of the truck bed and does not rock back and forth or side-to-side. The flat bottom portion of the bucket also allows this portion of the bucket to be used for smoothing out (evening out) the dirt in a maneuver known in the industry as back-dragging. The bucket is positioned with the flat portion of the bucket flat on the ground (or parallel to the ground at a desired height above the ground). The bucket is then dragged backwards, dragging along the dirt, in order to fill any holes and smooth out the ground.

The skid steer permits the operator both to raise and lower the bucket and to pivot the bucket along a left-to-right horizontal axis. This feature permits the operator to adjust the depth of the ditch he wishes to cut from zero depth (by having the tip of the “V” on the front end of the bucket right at ground level), to the maximum depth the bucket can allow (which can be defined as the “depth” of the “V”) in a single cut, and do so while moving forward so he can clearly see what he is doing. The operator can also adjust the “pitch” or angle of each side of the swale by moving the skid steer up or down the sides of the swale in successive cuts of the swale.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a perspective view of a skid steer with a bucket made in accordance with the present invention;

FIG. 2 is a side view of the skid steer and bucket of FIG. 1;

FIG. 3 is an enlarged, partially broken away side view of the skid steer and bucket of FIG. 2, with the bucket just barely touching the ground;

FIG. 4 is the same view as FIG. 3 but with the bucket pivoted such that the “V” cuts a deeper swale;

FIG. 5 is the same view as FIG. 4 but with the bucket pivoted even more, such that the “V” cuts at its maximum depth in a single pass;

FIG. 6 is the same view as FIG. 5 but with the bucket once again pivoted even more, such that the “V” is facing “backwards” toward the skid steer and the bucket is just pushing dirt forward without cutting into the ground;

FIG. 7 is a rear perspective view of the bucket of FIG. 1, showing the back plate with the skid steer mounting arrangement;

FIG. 8 is a schematic of the skid steer (represented by its front tires) cutting a pass on the desired swale; and

FIG. 9 is the same view as in FIG. 8, but with the skid steer offset from the centerline of the previous cut of the swale, with the resulting new cut of the swale shown in phantom.

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT

FIGS. 1-9 show an example of a bucket 10 for a skid steer 12 made in accordance with the present invention.

As may be appreciated from FIGS. 1 and 7, the bucket 10 includes a vertical, flat back wall 14 to which the skid steer mounting attachments 16 are secured, as is well known in the industry. It also has two vertical, flat end walls 18, and a horizontal flat bottom wall portion 20. The bucket 10 also has a V-shaped bottom wall portion that projects forward from the flat bottom wall portion 20. The V-shaped bottom wall portion is made up of three triangle-shaped plates 22A, 22B, 22C. The central triangular plate 22A connects to the front of the bottom wall portion 20 and to the two side triangular plates 22B, 22C. The left and right side triangular plates connect to the central triangular plate 22A and to the fronts of the respective left and right end walls 18, projecting forward and forming the V-shaped front edge of the bucket. The three plates 22A, 22B, 22C meet at the “bottom of the V” 24.

The flat bottom wall portion 20 defines a length dimension “L” (which is its long dimension and is roughly equal to the width of the skid steer, but which may be made longer or shorter depending on the desired overall width of the bucket 10), and a depth dimension D (See FIG. 7). This depth dimension “D” may be made deeper or shallower depending on personal preference and the capabilities of the skid steer. The deeper this dimension “D”, the more dirt the bucket 10 can carry, and the more stable is the bucket 10 to resisting back forth rocking motion during transport in a truck bed, for instance.

Of course, the central triangular plate 22A may be coplanar with the bottom wall 20, which would effectively extend the “depth” of the bottom wall 20 for the purposes of stability against back and forth rocking motion during transport. However, as best appreciated in FIGS. 2 and 3, in this preferred embodiment the middle plate 22A is at a slight tilt relative to this bottom wall 20, since the weight distribution of the bucket 10 is likely to keep the bucket 10 resting on the bottom wall 20 under all but the most extreme acceleration or braking action.

The flat bottom wall 20 also provides a lateral element of stability to the bucket 10 which prevents the bucket 10 from teetering from side to side when it is lying on the ground or in the bed of a truck, or during transport. This feature is particularly useful when attaching the bucket 10 to a skid steer 12. As the bucket 10 lies on the ground (or the bed of a truck), the bottom wall 20 keeps the bucket 10 properly oriented so that a skid steer 12 can simply be driven up to attach it to the bucket 10. Without this flat wall portion 20, the bucket 10 would tend to settle on one side, coming to rest on either one of the triangular plates 22B or 22C, presenting a tilted angle for the mounting of the bucket to the skid steer. In that case, the bucket would have to be leveled and chocked before the skid steer could hook up to it, thus requiring additional labor.

FIG. 3 shows the bucket 10 in operation where the skid steer 12 has lowered the bucket 10 so the bottom of the “V” 24 is just at ground level. Forward travel in this position results in a smoothing out of the ground.

FIG. 4 shows the bucket 10 when it has been rotated clockwise (rotated around the horizontal axis of rotation 26 between the skid steer 12 and the bucket 10) such that the bottom of the “V” 24 is digging into the ground to dig a drainage ditch with a “V” shaped profile such as the ditch 28 of FIG. 8. Any excess dirt being removed from the ditch is scooped up inside the bucket 10.

Further rotation of the bucket 12 around the axis of rotation 26 results in a progressively deeper ditch until the maximum depth is reached as is shown in FIG. 5. In this particular embodiment, the vertical distance from the bottom of the “V” to the top is one foot, so that is the maximum depth that can be cut with this blade. The bottom of the “V” 24 is at its maximum depth (while the end walls 18 are at, or just slightly below, the ground level). The resulting drainage ditch has the same “V” shaped profile as shown in FIG. 8, except that the ditch itself is deeper, and the sides of the drainage ditch are steeper. Once again, any excess dirt being cut out to dig the ditch is scooped up inside the bucket 10.

Continued rotation of the bucket 12 around the axis of rotation 26 results in a progressively shallower ditch until, as shown in FIG. 6, bottom of the “V” 24 is once again at ground level, but now the bucket 10 is being dragged forward. In this position, any excess dirt only gets scraped forward by the bucket 10; it is not scooped up into the bucket 10.

Therefore, as long as the bucket 10 is being pushed forward by the skid steer 12, the bucket 10 is digging a ditch and any excess dirt is scooped up into the bucket 10. Rotation of the bucket 10 until it is being dragged forward by the skid steer 12 results in scraping or smoothing of the ditch, with any excess dirt getting pushed along to fill any voids or holes instead of getting scooped inside the bucket 10.

FIG. 8 depicts the profile of a ditch 28 which might be achieved using the bucket 10 (represented by the two front tires 30 of the skid steer 12) after one or more passes over the ground. It is sometimes desirable to dig a ditch 32 (See FIG. 9) with one side (one bank) which is steeper and higher than the other side. This feature is desirable, for instance, when two homes are side side-by-side and one of them is at a higher elevation that the other one.

It is possible to achieve this “steeper on one side” effect using the bucket 10. After a first cut as shown in FIG. 8 (resulting in a symmetrical ditch 28), the skid steer 12 is repositioned so that it is no longer riding along the centerline of the ditch 28 (as depicted by the tires 30 in FIG. 8) but rather so that its tires 30 are offset from the centerline, with one set of tires 30 further up the side of the ditch 28 than the other set of tires 30. This will tilt the bucket 10 so that one plate 22C of the “V” shaped front wall of the bucket 10 is at a steeper angle and the other plate 22B is at a shallower angle, resulting in the new ditch 32 (shown in phantom in FIG. 9).

While the embodiment described above shows an embodiment for a drainage ditch bucket, it will be obvious to those skilled in the art that modifications may be made to the embodiment described above without departing from the scope of the present invention.