How to Best Maintain Your Ground Engaging Tools
Ground-engaging tools (also known as G.E.T) are the parts of heavy equipment that make contact with the ground to cut, dig, move and grade materials. These removable components — such as buckets, edges and teeth — are designed to absorb impact and resist the force of the ground, helping to protect the very expensive internal components of your heavy-duty machines.
Consider the detrimental delays you would experience if you had to replace your entire machine when a tip came off! Fortunately, when an edge or teeth wear out, these parts are easy to swap, meaning reduced maintenance costs and decreased downtime.
Here are some key tips for properly maintaining your G.E.T to ensure the highest levels of safety, performance and productivity.
Daily Inspections
Machine operators should conduct a daily visual inspection of all machines before they are used. During this inspection, the operator should keep a close eye out for cracks on edges/welding joints, missing adaptor covers or shrouds, loose or missing hardware/retainer bolts and pins, and excessive or uneven wear.
When it comes to repairing welding cracks, it is imperative that you fix these cracks promptly. The longer you wait, the higher the risk is for extensive structural repairs along with increased safety concerns. Similarly, running the machine with missing wear parts causes major damage to normally protected areas which can result in structural damage to the permanent parts of the equipment.
These combined steps help you to decrease repairs and downtime while also increasing your equipment’s life span.
Replacing and Rotating G.E.T
Best practice for well-maintaining G.E.T is to be prompt when replacing parts, and never allow parts to exceed their wear life. Worn-out blades or plates will put stress on the machine and decrease performance. Remember, these parts are inexpensive in comparison to the equipment they protect.
We recommend keeping a maintenance log and/or replacement schedule. If you can predict when you will need new parts, you can place your order ahead of time to ensure there is no downtime waiting on replacement parts.
Rotating the tips, end bits and edges can also help maximize wear life, while keeping them sharp and evenly used.
Analyze Wear Patterns
By keeping a log, you can also track and analyze wear patterns on your equipment. You can use these patterns to look out for operating issues or to determine if different equipment would be better suited to the given task or terrain.
Quality Matters
By purchasing high-quality G.E.T, it is possible to decrease fuel consumption and stress on other parts of your equipment– such as engines and hydraulic hoses. Premium G.E.T products not only have an extended wear life (meaning decreased downtime and increased production in the long run), but they also improve job safety. This is because high-quality G.E.T malfunction and/or break down less often than inferior G.E.T.
Cutting Edge Supply stocks thousands of products designed to replace and outwear the original equipment manufacturer part. Only the toughest heat-treated, through-hardened, quenched and tempered alloy steels are used, from standard to extreme heavy-duty grades pending the application.
Our facility also offers in-house Tungsten Carbide Embedding for blades, teeth, and wear parts to improve performance and further extend wear life.