Heard a stat that 80% of dredge breakdowns are from worn cutter teeth...

Been running for 3 seasons and always replaced teeth when they looked beat, but that number from a maintenance seminar in Seattle got me thinking if I'm swapping too early or too late. Anyone got a rule of thumb for when they pull teeth based on production rate vs visual wear?

3 comments

3 Comments

shane_carter5d ago

Man, I gotta push back on that. I think swapping early is way cheaper in the long run. Worn teeth don't just cut slower, they mess up your whole cutterhead by putting uneven stress on the bearings and gear train. I've seen guys try to squeeze another week out of a set and end up burning through a $3,000 bearing pack instead of a $400 set of teeth. Why gamble a whole shift of downtime on a few bucks of tungsten?

blairm775d ago

Man, that's exactly the kind of thing I see all the time with people skimping on car maintenance. Skip an oil change to save $50 and end up replacing an engine two years later.

kevinw945d ago

Nah, I gotta disagree with that take. If you swap teeth too soon, you're throwing money away for no good reason. Those things are designed to wear down, that's their job. You're paying for the tungsten and steel in them, so use it up all the way. Swapping early based on some theory about bearing stress is just guessing without proof. I've run sets until they were basically nubs and never had a bearing failure from it. The real cost is all those extra downtime hours swapping teeth that still have life left in them. Save your money until they're actually done.