Hedge trimmer on a 360

[average farmer]

Has anyone ever put a flail on a 360 digger? What are the pros and cons ? The biggest pros as far as I can see are only running on the field once with very low pressure and maybe being able to cut hedges in the winter by running on growing crops.

 

[Dave W]

You need a big digger for a small head. Ie you'll need a 7t digger for a 1m head. Or thereabouts.

 

[JWL]

Do you think it would be feasible to run a higher output hydraulic pump to run the cutting head driven off the breaker line?

 

[Shutesy]

Has anyone ever put a flail on a 360 digger? What are the pros and cons ? The biggest pros as far as I can see are only running on the field once with very low pressure and maybe being able to cut hedges in the winter by running on growing crops.

Something I had a brief look into, you've covered most of the pros I would think, main cons being roads, either moving between fields or blocks of land or whether you have roadside hedges you need to cut, not really ideal with a tracked digger. You seem to need a fairly big digger to get a reasonable sized flail head width. The other thought I had was wear on tracks and running gear, it would be putting quite a few miles on the tracks that might only be designed to move 100m on average a day so replacement parts costs might have to be factored in.

 

[ARW]

I don’t think you could make the best job either, a tracked machine can be rocky, also as said you need a 13 tonne digger to power a small head, better off with a 5 tonne tracked dumper with a hedgecutter and donkey engine

 

[Goweresque]

Its all down to the flow available on the machine vs the flow required for the head. I have a flail head for my excavator and it can just about run it on the hammer circuit, it loses RPM if you try to track as opposed to swing. So its not easy to make that tidy a job as you're always moving the head in an arc. So its not something I use in preference to the hedgecutter, but as you say you can go places with an excavator a tractor would be up to its axles, so it does allow you to get on at times when all other methods are unavailable. I think generally flails on excavators are used for area clearance or basic overgrown hedge shaping rather than just neat trimming.

In this case I was using it to cut back brambles in a ditch.

 

[alomy75]

Its all down to the flow available on the machine vs the flow required for the head. I have a flail head for my excavator and it can just about run it on the hammer circuit, it loses RPM if you try to track as opposed to swing. So its not easy to make that tidy a job as you're always moving the head in an arc. So its not something I use in preference to the hedgecutter, but as you say you can go places with an excavator a tractor would be up to its axles, so it does allow you to get on at times when all other methods are unavailable. I think generally flails on excavators are used for area clearance or basic overgrown hedge shaping rather than just neat trimming.

In this case I was using it to cut back brambles in a ditch.

Sorry to revive an old thread but wondering about doing this; are excavator flails bespoke or can you adapt a McConnell/bomford ex-hedgecutter flail to fit?

 

[TripleSix]

Sorry to revive an old thread but wondering about doing this; are excavator flails bespoke or can you adapt a McConnell/bomford ex-hedgecutter flail to fit?

The flail heads I've seen for diggers tend to be heavier built that a tractor type hedgecutter head, there's chance of a lot of force being transmitted by a digger....

 

[Fendt516profi]

Has anyone put a flail head on back of a backhoe

 

[Goweresque]

Has anyone put a flail head on back of a backhoe

A 4CX has a hydraulic flow capacity of about 80l/min, which doesn't sound like enough to run a flail and the back actor at the same time. A hammer is never being used while moving the arm, so all the flow can go to the hammer, then you move to another spot and start hammering again etc. Whereas a flail has to be running constantly and there be sufficient flow to move the arm at the same time.

For example a Bomford Kestrel Evo E has a pump capacity of 74l/min, the Evo S is 88l/min, the Hawk is 104l/min with a 125l/min option. So you're on the edge for the smaller models and sub par for any of the larger ones. Plus one assumes that the back actor on a backhoe requires more flow to shift it than the arm on a hedgecutter, so the combination of a flail head plus the back actor arm would probably need at very least 100l/min to work reasonably together.

Then there's the weight hanging out the side with no stabilisers down. Backhoes aren't designed to be moving while the back arms are out so I reckon it would be pretty lop sided and sway horrendously.